An author asked for some feedback on a cover and introduced me to http://covercritics.com, where some awesome designers are helping authors by giving cover design feedback.
This was the cover in question:
It’s bad, but the badness of the hand-drawn sketches almost makes it cool enough to pull off. But that would be risky… probably safer to start over. Nathan on CoverCritics says:
Have a T-Rex wearing a conservative tie and holding an iPad! Zombies around the water cooler! An amoeba with black-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector!
Those are all fun ideas, if this is a fun, zany business book that can back them up, however, for most professional non-fiction books on business, simple is better and custom art will rarely work.
These samples are great, you could definitely do something more clever or interesting… but they get the point across.
The main problem is that there are no benefits. This should be the title:
The New Darwinian Laws Every Business Must Know
But it needs a subtitle, like “How to dominate the competition on a micro budget and become the King of your field.”