I love book covers. This is one of the reasons why I prefer paper books to electronic. When done well, they draw us straight to the books we love. When done badly – well – things happen. Mismatches occur. People pick up books they think will be one thing, but turn out to be another. Or they don’t pick up the book at all because the cover doesn’t pull pull them in.
Sometimes, the covers are just, shall we say, not well planned out:
And sometimes they are incredibly beautiful:
Something I never realized before I got published is that there are certain known conventions for covers. If a man and woman appear on the cover together, it usually means romance. Certain colors tend to mean certain genres, etc. I suppose this all makes sense, but as a reader I never really thought about it. If I like a cover, I pick up the book, read the back copy, and a page from the middle to see if I like the writing style. Which is why I am eternally grateful to the beautiful cover I got for BETWEEN.
What about you? Do you have a favorite cover, or one that makes you die of laughter? We’d love to have you share.
AH HAHAHAHAHAHA! I had to stare to figure it out. Good cover gone bad!!!
That Rifleman cover always cracks me up.
I love cover art. A good cover can absolutely make me pick up a book (and a bad one, sadly, will often make me pass over). I love going to the bookstore and looking at all the marvelous designs. I’m thrilled that my absolute favorite book cover is my own (yeah, narcissistic – sorry, but it’s true!!) but I also really love the HUNGER GAMES covers, and your cover for BETWEEN (because, seriously, dragon in a snow globe!!) and all the covers for the other debs’ novels too. In fact, I’m delighted to be a member of this year’s class because we ALL got amazing cover art!!
Oooh, I do like that second one. I love covers with blues and purples — like Kristin Harmel’s THE SWEETNESS OF FORGETTING or Anita Hughes’ MARKET STREET and LAKE COMO. So pretty.
Me too–LOVE purple covers. Always reach for them first.
I am with you in the book shopping department–cover, then copy, then one random page! I wish they could stack books like they do cards in a magic trick, so that one page readers scanned before buying was one of the ones where I’m witty and brilliant or, barring that, at least not a page of exposition!