denise

The gun was not pointing at the customer, but at the sky. The background had a wispy / cloudy image relating to the paranormal aspect of the novel, and they felt that made it look as if the gun had recently been fired (smoking). That was what they said. What they told me was that the gun image had the book flagged so that it would not be shown in any promotional or related items...that it was not in the consideration by the algorithms for promo. It existed on the platform and people could link directly to it, or to my author page, but it wasn't discoverable otherwise. So I don't think the cover affects the algorithm, other than that in this case it locked the book OUT of the algorithm.

I'm glad you liked it! It is cool to see the transitions. I love cover art 🙂

You can use a gun on the cover, they just don't want the gun pointing at the customer. As in, don't have it pointing straight out. Try it in silhouette, pointing to the side of the page or down. That usually doesn't get flagged. Then again, some days there's no rhyme or reason to what Amazon database takes exception to.

I don't think they put algorithms behind that...it's more organic than that. As in, it might catch more eyeballs or different eyeballs in whatever cover parade it ends up in. I think their database crunching works it's evil on the categories and keywords, but once that's done you still have to capture the person browsing. THAT is where your cover art comes in, and it's something Amazon can't really target with AI.

Thanks for sharing these covers over time - it's cool to see them side by side.

Kris

There are certain things they "will not" promote. Guns are one of the things they do not want to promote. So put a gun on the cover and they get unhappy.

I didn't realize Amazon placed any algorithm weight on cover art? Wow! That is fascinating. Makes sense and yet it both surprises and alarms me. LOL