The above solves several problems:
- There's no more AI nonsense.
- Better title. No more misleading suggestions of horror stories.
- My face is no longer part of the cover.
- I pass the "thumbnail fail" test and the "squint" test.
- There's no longer anything creepy going on (unless there are tenderfooted wimps who're also easily creeped out by aliens/monsters).
- I'd say there's no "composition chaos" as was, frankly, also true of the other designs (they might've been misleading, but they were focused without being busy).
- Fonts: It's all the same font, just different sizes and weights. I stuck with all-caps for the title and subtitle and did initial-caps for the author name.
- The dark-blue film reel is larger to signify that the book is mostly movie/TV reviews (about 95%), with very few book reviews (about 5%).
- If people don't like the notion of an alien who is cheerful at the prospect of reviewing things, I don't know what to say. At least the alien isn't AI: It's drawn by me.
- Most importantly, the cover is now more directly relevant to the book's content. The alien is a recurring character of mine and so is a symbol of me, and if people can't relate to that, or if they get too literal-minded and start wondering what an alien is doing reviewing movies and books, well, that's their problem, their Spock complex. Just think symbolically: an alien might represent a person's feeling of detachment or separateness from the regular human crowd, as if the reviews were coming from a different or remote perspective. It doesn't have to be any deeper than that.
From what I can see on Google and Amazon, there is no English-language book with the specific title Sights, Sounds, Words. (There is a WordPress blog with that name.) I also think the title works for what will be a multi-volume series.
As always, grunt and squeeze out your insights in the comments. Please read the comments policy (just above the comment window, where it says, "READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!"—which plenty of idiots never do.
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