The Phoenix Awards

Round One Critiques

Here are your critiques! Read to the end to see when the information for round two will be published.

Please note that if you changed your cover or blurb in this past week, the reviews we are giving you are likely for the old blurb/cover. We have already seen one example of this, a person who changed their cover at the last second, so their cover critique will, unfortunately, be on their previous cover.

These are our thoughts, written to help you become better writers and/or designers. You are welcome to disagree, but rudeness is not welcome. These entries are not in any particular order either, it was completely random so your placement on this chapter doesn't mean in any way that your entry is worse or better than others.

TBJess - Villainous Ventures

AnniesBooks: Excellent synopsis! There are only a few things I think should be changed. When you say, "When an equally, if not more so, cynical..." try using two en dashes instead of commas. You should also never start a sentence with the word "and", as it looks unprofessional. 

CosmicGraphics: I like the colour scheme you have going but I would suggest making it a little lighter so that you can still see what's going because it's a little too dark, you can still have the black but maybe make that smoke and text lighter so you can see the contrast. I would use a more sans serif font for the text without that stroke or whatever that pattern is you have on it. Sometimes less is more and you don't want to over-complicate a font. I'm absolutely unable to read the rest of the text on your cover but be sure to have the author name in the middle.

MartaxSofia:  Your colour scheme isn't bad with the font and image itself don't work together, the placement and the size of the text is also quite important, I felt like your subtitle was too close together to be read easily. You should choose your hero on that; on the other hand I liked your synopsis, it was simple but I'd say you need to add a bit of flare to it to make someone desperately want to read your book.

TheWandererMadness - To the Neverland

AnniesBooks: Your synopsis is pretty long, which is great! Many people only have a few sentences, which is never good. I would suggest though that you remove the random exclamatory commentary. Examples of that in your synopsis: "What! But how?" and "Who am I kidding? It's the worst." Another suggestion I have would be to write out the word five, rather than just putting the number. The picture you used for the cover is cute, by the way!

CosmicGraphics: Your cover is very simple and that's a good thing, it looks cute! I would suggest putting a little less shadow on the text. I would also make "to the" the same type of text as the rest and have it much smaller and spaced out a bunch and having "neverland" right under it. You don't need "a novel by", just have the author's name.

MartaxSofia: I really like your cover, it's pretty and simple but doesn't exactly seem to match what the synopsis leads on to and I'd keep the font the same throughout the title. Your synopsis is reasonably big and I'd remove the personal statements like "Who am I kidding?" and "What! But how?". I think you should ought to keep it clean and professional, maybe in the third person and sum it up a notch.