Request feedback on draft cover TARNISHED GOLD

Ooh I really like it! It's perfect for the genre and I think captures your story well. The only thing I'd say is maybe brightening up the title a bit. I get the idea that it's meant to reflect "tarnished" but I think it's a little too dark and hard to distinguish from the rest of the cover. I think it'll especially be tricky when in thumbnail size.

I'm not in any way an artist of any kind, so giant salt boulder. I'm just bored, so clicked, heh.

I think it looks really good, like professionally-done and all. There are two things though that caught my eye off the bat -- the border is overlaid on the top and under the pic on the bottom, and the pic of the woman is just ... odd? There's something unnatural-seeming about her hands, though I couldn't tell you why it seems that way, but the oddness overall is mostly the direction of her gaze. It looks like she's looking at her own butt, or she's pulling up her skirts with her hands like 'ew, what'd I step in?'' looking down at her shoes.

I really like this cover as well—the only thing that jumps out to me is the way the D in TARNISHED overlaps her hair. The colors are similar enough that it kinda blends together. I do like the way the gold contrasts with the red on the title. Interesting sounding book, too!

I think it's great too. I agree to lighten up the title font.

Is this print or e-book only? For e-book/ad work, I'd probably lighten all the fonts a tad just to improve contrast, and bump your name up a bit (it disappears completely at thumbnail dimensions).

For a POD version, I'd work on the tarnish: he's used a fairly straightforward shadowing technique to suggest tarnish, but in print, at 6"x9", you've got the room to put a more realistic tarnishing effect that would really stand out.

Whoever has done this for you has fallen into the same trap most on here do, which is to just throw so much onto a page. The very best covers, regardless of the genre they exist in, are simple and do not rely on over-ornamentation to make up for average typography and composition. This simplicity also aids in a) standing out against a sea of similar covers, and b) means that the cover is usable in most contexts (digital, print, thumbnails, etc.)

The border, the weird belt texture, and the conspicuous text effects are all unnecessary. If text needs such obvious effects to show up on the page, then the type isn't set correctly. This can be seen in the author name which is slightly washed out by the image behind it. The issue may well be the texture that seems to be laid over most of the image, as it's difficult for any colour text to show up when overlaid on a texture. The belt - I'm going ahead and assuming it's supposed to be a belt - looks very artificial, and doesn't really help the text stand out. If nothing else the title needs to be lightened. And that border is just completely unnecessary, it doesn't add to the cover, it doesn't actually do anything, so I'd lose it.

I think it's great, and not too busy. Making the title brighter makes sense.

gtbun - normally I'd agree with you about the too busy but this is actually a very standard kind of busy-ness for romance covers. And I really think for that reason it suits its genre well. I know you said you want the cover to stand out, and of course one does, but there's a very different set of "rules" for romance. You almost want it to look as similar as you can to everything else because you want romance readers to feel like they can trust this will have all the expected tropes in it. So yeah. I think in this rare case, such a cover is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Though I do agree (as I stated above) that the title needs to be way brighter.

What size of hotel are we talking, in a large town? I would guess this was more of a mail-order bride goes to the frontier sort of story based on the background? It's a nice cover but as someone who likes businesswoman historical and not farming/frontier ones, it wouldn't "ping" my interest.

Not a romance reader or writer, and I've seen romance books seem to have these types of covers. What caught my eye are
1. Feels like there's a halo on the woman's head... doesn't suit.
2. The dude in the hat next to the car looks tacky to me (kill the dude, from the image of course, not your story) and maybe make the backdrop a bit more "mining-y" rather than what looks like a barn or something.

The designer seems to know their skill, so this is a matter of taste I suppose.

That's a really good cover.
The positioning of the model, the text and the car are all excellent.
I'd go with it for sure.
The only oddity is the bottom border disappearing to the right.