I’ve spent half of my life trying to save indie authors from ugly book covers.
It’s a lot of work, because authors with big visions and zero graphic design skills usually make pretty terrible covers. There are even memes and Reddit boards about it. The main reason why this happens, is that authors try to stand out rather than fit in: to make something New and Interesting rather than something Obvious and Attractive.
Many years ago I built a “hot or not” style book cover rating system, where you could uploading your book cover and get feedback. It was too hard to maintain, but I just replaced it with something even cooler:
You can upload your book cover and get instant critique and feedback. It’s not perfect, but I trained it on my decades of experience and I think the rating is pretty accurate, even if the specific details aren’t quite right. This is a FREE tool to help indie authors. It’s not a total solution, but if you have an ugly book cover wouldn’t you rather know before you get mocked on an online forum?
Free book cover critique tool
While I did put it up on the original domain (doesmycoversuck) – because I also have a little Facebook group people have been using since the years since its demise – I’ve also added it to my main site for quick and easy book covers:
www.diybookcovers.com/covercritic
Here’s one of my covers as an example. Once you get above 6 (7~10) it may be difficult to see exactly why something is winning or failing. But that’s OK. Book covers are mostly pass/fail… they work or they don’t. This free critique and feedback tool should offer assurance if you’re doubting your cover, or clarity if you are not.
If you enjoy it, I hope you’ll check out my book cover templates, tutorials and tools to help you get a much higher quality makeover, because you worked hard on your story and your book cover should be the best possible version that it deserves.
Your cover should do this work for you.
Three packages. Real samples in 10 days. 100% money-back guarantee.
Start your cover →
