How not to design a book cover

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...] Thus, I confess, this guy slays me: http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com.au/ [...]

What I foud curious in my brief browse there was (aside from the unnecessary duplication of lousybookcovers images) the amount of criticism of professionally produced book covers. That made for an interesting comparison I thought. Of course one difference is that professional covers do (mostly) at least look like book covers rather than a page left on the coffee table while the kids had their crayons out, but even so, it demonstrates how subjective some of this is. For example the resurrected pulp fiction covers were, I thought, highly appropriate as covers for the resurrected pulp fiction. The fact that this blogger thought they looked wrong on his modern ereader is surely just a matter of preference, and hardly worthy of comment except by someone holding themselves up as a paragon of good taste - for which I found no evidence.

[VydorScope]

All of this is subjective - every time one of these sites is posted (seems like there are a countless number of them) I always see some covers I like on them. Some of them are usually just "okay" - while some are really awful.

[VydorScope]

For example:

I bet some of these http://www.shortlist.com/entertainme...st-book-covers show up on some ones "fail blog" of book covers or maybe some of these http://www.shortlist.com/entertainme...st-book-covers

It is an art form, and all art has hatters. Its like a requirement of existence or something.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

For example:

I bet some of these http://www.shortlist.com/entertainme...st-book-covers show up on some ones "fail blog" of book covers or maybe some of these http://www.shortlist.com/entertainme...st-book-covers

It is an art form, and all art has hatters. Its like a requirement of existence or something.

If nothing else, that is a more interesting selection than I've see on the previous links. Okay, so there's some there I might not like overly much, but it's nice to see the variety.

[davidfor]

To add one more link, http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/. All Sci-fi/Fantasy and very tongue in cheek.

[silasgreenback]

Originally Posted by davidfor

To add one more link, http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/. All Sci-fi/Fantasy and very tongue in cheek.

You beat me to it! I've had that in my feeds for a while now and it's a continual delight.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by silasgreenback

You beat me to it! I've had that in my feeds for a while now and it's a continual delight.

@davidfor:

TY, TY, TY for sharing that. If nothing else, it will make my cover designers less flagrantly hysterical when we get the ubiquitous requests for: (not making this up)

"I want a guy in a cave, with a skull in his hand, with a sword, and a dragon, and a saber-toothed tiger. Oh, yeah, and a crown and a storm."

Thank you again. That site is an utter hoot. And proof positive that we should not assume that self-pubs are indeed the lesser creatures; even people making big money at this can have execrable taste!

Hitch

[gmw]

Adding my thanks for the goodshowsir link, I spent rather more time there this afternoon than I had intended. Okay, so there was a lot of what you come to expect looking at these sites, albeit most professionally done, but there were a few pieces in there that I really quite liked - as artwork, I have no idea what they meant to the story. The cover for the H.P.Lovecraft book in particular I thought was quite stunning (not something I want on my wall or anything but wonderfully done), I'd have loved to see the original artwork.

[gmw]

In the previous post I said: "I have no idea what they meant to the story", and I think that's an interesting point that you can see expressed in many professionally done book covers. The cover doesn't actually have to have much to do with the story. Of course it's nice when it does, even if only tangentially or incidentally, but that's not really what the cover is for. The cover is to get you to pick up the book in the first place. Once you've read the book and decided that you loved or hated it, the cover has become something of an irrelevance (except in those extremely rare cases where the cover hits a perfect note that you want to look at often).

You can see this expressed on many of those covers: sod the story, no one's going to care about the story if they don't pick up the book first, first and foremost get their attention. If the reader is going to spent all their time trying to match up the blonde with the big candles on the front with a character in the story then you've probably lost the reader anyway.