drawn cover may help. but not that much. I would say start out with an edited one. you can always get a drawn later.
honestly the cover wont matter to much actually. no matter what you are gonna struggle with getting people to read your story.
personally I really hate when I see a story with a drawn cover and the the story is garbage. like a person spend time makeing this and you cant even make the charatere face the right way shame on you.
Now that you mention it, I like drawn covers a little better, but that will barely, if at all, affect my likelihood to click a story. I do judge the cover of the story, but not a lot. The real test is the description.
What I’m looking for in a cover:
Not the default cover
Doesn't look like this
Seems to indicate that it’ll be a genre that I like
same. the cover makes me look. the description makes me read. which is why I hate those wage descriptions stories have. I wanna know what the story is about. if the cover says more about the story then the description it’s not good
also I had a girl I made a drawn cover for who wanted something like that. she got the guy kissing the girls cheek instead
you don’t have to have drawn cover. editied is great too! just make sure your characters are cut well, fonts are nice, backgrounds matches with character’s mood, outfit etc.
Edited maybe
Whenever I make a cover for my story, I end up requesting from someone else, cuz it looks awful. So non of my 8 stories have covers that I Made by myself, yet other authors have covers that I’ve Made.
your work is amazing! Don’t doubt yourself I tried doing art and it took me like 3 hours and I had 60+ layers and guess what? I deleted it instead of pressing the merge button