After hours and hours of struggling to do it myself, I finally decided to pay a guy to redesign my book cover. Book covers these days have to be readable when shrunk down to the size of images displayed on Amazon. They have to be simple, with high contrast between the text and the background.
I found that a large percentage of book covers used white or very light letters on a dark background, or the other way round. The font is also very important, as it must be readable at small size on the computer, and not be too weak. I think this got it just right.
The artist is M. S. (Mike) Corley. Here is his blog. Take a look at some of the work he's done. He did a redesign of the Harry Potter covers that is brilliant. He's also done a Frankenstein cover that is unbelievable. The best part: he's very quick and responsive, easy to work with, and his fee is very reasonable.
