Ten Cover Trends I Have Strong Feelings About

Strong-ish feelings, anyway.

1. Covers that look like books. I’m a sucker for anything that’s been made to look like an old leatherbound book – or even a battered paperback, like this edition of Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair.
2. Covers with photographs of people on them. Photographs of people will always turn me off a book – especially a fantasy novel. I find them kind of tacky.
3. Busy covers. For instance: I love Josh Kirby’s illustrations for Terry Pratchett’s books. Anything with that larger-than-life, colourful wackiness is good for me.
4. Metallic covers. I’m not talking full-on Scholastic Hunger Games here; just covers that deploy tasteful metallic highlights here and there. I think it really makes them stand out. Case in point: my lovely edition of Scarlett Thomas’ Our Tragic Universe.
5. Matt covers. I generally prefer matt covers to glossy ones. I think it’s because glossy ones scratch and dent easily, so they get tatty quite quickly; whereas matt ones feel more classic, and are more environmentally friendly too!
6. Paintings on the covers of classics. Penguin Classics are guilty of this quite a lot. Putting a painting (or a sculpture) on the cover of a classic novel often does both works a disservice: the painting gets taken out of context – often it’s a detail that’s used, not the full work – so its power is ruined; and the book is often not represented accurately by the painting.
7. Film covers. Ugh. Nothing annoys me more than a book cover that’s really a film poster. Partly this ties into my dislike for covers with photographs on them; partly the obviousness of the marketing irritates me; partly I’m annoyed by the implication that the book and the film are the same narrative, which, again, tends to do both works a disservice.
8. Vintage covers. I love covers that evoke a sort of 1920s vibe, without actually looking like books from the 1920s, because books from the 1920s generally didn’t look like anything much. Case in point: this cover of Radiance by Catherynne Valente.
9. Themed series covers. I love series covers that do something clever to link each volume together. The New English Library covers for Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, for instance, have the Tower getting bigger and bigger on each successive cover, which is a really striking way of illustrating the progression of Roland’s quest.
10. Painted fantasy scenes. I don’t usually much like fantasy covers that go for straight “realistic” depictions of characters or scenes: too often they jar with my idea of what the world or the character looks like. I actually prefer covers that are indirect, or abstract, or slightly surreal.

(The prompt for this post was suggested by the Broke and the Bookish’s weekly meme Top Ten Tuesday.)