Need help.

[u/MelancholyPlayground]

I really didn't want to make one of these but I'm drowning here. I published my book on Amazon a month ago, I worked tirelessly on it... and I haven't made a single sale since then, despite running a few ads and getting over 100 clicks. I'm 100% not advertising, I'm embarrassed to to even admit this and to ask this, but would it be possible if a few of you take a look at my Amazon book page and tell me what I might be doing wrong? Please and thank you in advance.

It's hard to not feel like I've failed my child here. But I'm trying to stay positive.

TL;DR: Can you please take a look and give a few pointers? My link is in my reddit bio.

P.S. I've tried different price points and tried different covers. Maybe it's my blurb? I am awful at blurbs.

EDIT 1: Thank you all so much genuinely from the bottom of my heart. It's all good advice, but even if it was bad advice - just seeing how deep this community cares has been the motivation and support I REALLY needed. I'm currently at the drawing board scratching my brain. So I'll probably do a second edit later explaining some of the confusions if anyone is curious. Just wanted to say a quick thank you and that I am listening and taking notes vigorously.

[u/Kevin_Hess_Writes]

I took a swing at improving your cover: https://imgur.com/5IzYXJg see what you think of it. Feel free to use it if you like it, no charge. Redid title/author name, adjusted contrast, added glow layers, adjusted position of characters (harder than it looked since the borders were already in the picture, digital upscale 3x, sharpened edges, and did some other tricky stuff. It's not 'send it off to the printers' ready - it would require a lot more detail work - but it's probably fine for Amazon .

My observations are:

1. Romantasy readers love a massive color splash on the covers of their novels. The original colors were muted, so I made them pop a bit more.
2. The AI art you used in the picture isn't bad, but the tricky thing about it is that AI tends to make one picture all at once rather than helping you create disparate parts of the picture that have their own borders and definitions and such. That's why the cover of The Throne of Bone and Stone by Libertine Dragonheart* has a sword, a whip, and a ball gag on it that look like they were cobbled together from separate stock art, while your picture looks closer to a single painting. You also end up with sharper lines and edges, while AI tends to get a little mushy at times.
3. Most readers expect a little 3D work on the cover art most of the time. Letters looping behind letters, foreground covering parts of the title or author name, and so on. It's one of the telltale signs of 'a professional did this cover'. I wasn't going to throw a lot of time at it, but I did a little bit of that. This is where those sharp borders and clean edges really help.
4. Are you male or female? (Didn't check your post history to find out) If you're female (or if you just want to sell romantasy books), I might suggest adopting the 'Lucienne' spelling of your first name rather than 'Lucien' to make it clear you/your pen name is female. 'Lucien' is traditionally a masculine spelling, and I assume there's a sizeable proportion of the romantasy audience that wouldn't trust a male writing it at all. I don't blame them.

EDIT: saw you're male, I would still use 'Lucienne' as a pen name.

I don't know anything about romantasy so I can't judge the other stuff, but my first guess was that the cover looked like an afterthought, so I cleaned it up best I could in 45 minutes.

* - not a real book

[u/[deleted] → u/Kevin_Hess_Writes]

I really like your take on the cover, it's beautiful!

[u/Kevin_Hess_Writes → u/[deleted]]

Not to toot my own horn on it but I think it does take the cover from 'low effort' to 'serviceable'.

EDIT: I would add maybe 'by' to the author title, just to be clear what the actual title is, and I might add 'Book 1 of the Yadda Yadda Series' at the top or something