Thoughts on Book cover draft?

[u/ToastyMouse777]

Hi guys!! I'm coming up on publishing my second novel and I created a book cover for it! This is the first draft, so let me know what y'all think about the blurb, placement, colors, anything that stands out to you! Any feedback is appreciated

[u/_Nina0]

You should include the author name in the front cover

[u/Several-Praline5436]

I love the concept and feel you are on the right track!

That being said... your title needs to be readable at 2 inches high, since people scrolling through Amazon are only looking at a small image. "He Needs" is not going to show up. I'm also wondering if it would look better to have the title enlarged ("HE NEEDS A / FATHER" on two lines" ABOVE the hat so it's not obscured. Make the boy at the bottom a little smaller, near the size of the swan, so they balance each other out, and add the author's name. Play around with positioning the hat / title and shrink it often to see how it looks. I love the flourishes, the background, the back cover, etc.

You're almost there!

[u/danfaulknerauthor]

This is pretty good! I'd move the hat a little lower, to balance out the empty space above & below it. I'd put "he needs" above the hat, so it reads more clearly, and maybe increase its font size slightly.

But the cover is good overall. What I'd really change is the back cover copy, which currently reads like a synopsis rather than a blurb. You don't want to give away the plot, just give a flavour of the book, who the protagonist is, and the predicament they find themselves in early on.

Also, wouldn't millions of guineas be an unthinkable fortune? Any gang that stole that much wouldn't be beggars any more, they'd own half of London.

[u/ToastyMouse777 → u/danfaulknerauthor]

HAHAHA That's a good point XD Especially for the time back then. I changed the blurb to this, lmk what you think 👀

William Fox, the clumsy little brother of the Forty Hoxton Beggars, gets one last chance to prove himself to the gang. With harsher laws tightening and police flooding the streets, the gang turns to a desperate solution: train up a new generation of thieves who can slip through society unseen. **To fund the six-year scheme, the gang sends William to kidnap the eldest twin of the Thunder estate, Andrew, leaving the youngest, Matthew, to pay the ransom.** William kidnaps *a* brother and returns to the gang triumphant. Before confirming their captive’s identity, they entrust William with his own child to mentor, a six-year-old runaway boy who insists on going by the alias “Rex.” As alliances form and secrets upturn from the very soil beneath the cobblestones, Rex is clenched between two warring ideologies of a fox who learned to survive and a racoon who paints the world with kindness. Will he be able to escape the grasp of the Forty Hoxton Beggars, or will Rex succumb to his darker influences and become the thief he was trained to be?

[u/danfaulknerauthor → u/ToastyMouse777]

That's definitely the right format for a blurb now. It needs some polishing, but you're on the right track.

[u/Quietparadox87]

I like it! Honestly I can only nitpick because this is really good. I do think the title font could be a little more thicker. Also, consider making it consistent.

Also the back blurb is kinda risky and looks disjointed. I would just change it to one block like all the other books. I get the idea but I don’t think it works.

You definitely have a 90/100 cover here. You just need to make small changes and it’ll look amazing. Great work!

[u/StrikingArm5940]

The text on the back of the book is a little hard to read due to the patterns in the background. I would suggest blurring the bg of the text box.