What is happening to book covers?

Why have book covers become so throwaway and ugly in recent years?

Once-upon-a-time book cover art was a thing of beauty. A vision to behold.

These days, book covers often have horribly scrawled and gaudy letters on cheap or AI-generated backgrounds.

Is there a logical reason for such ugly book covers?

Perhaps.

• Millions more books are now published than ever before.

• There is less time to find, create or license good artwork.

• There is now more competition for good artwork.

• There are higher associated costs.

• Marketers choose gaudy letters to stand out from the crowd (except they're all doing it).

• Gaudy lettering is now a modern trend.

What has happened? Why are book covers becoming so consistently ugly?

Big letters have always been important on book covers.

You need to see the title and the name of the author in big and bold print.

Trying to get a balance with a nice cover is tricky.

It doesn’t make sense to have tiny letters and it's best to have bold and obvious information.

Bad news! This can result in a lack of balance between the message and the cover.

Lets go Back to Basics

BAD BOOK COVERS

In the past there were a lot of bad covers.

These are usually marketing mishaps. Opinion is subjective, but you can instinctively tell why a bad cover is bad. Little or no thought went into the design and there's something intrinsically wrong.

This is because of:

1. Badly implemented designs and graphics.

2. The wrong message being put across.

3. An out-of-date look and feel.

4. Photos being cheaply superimposed onto trashy backgrounds.

5. Covers that are dull and boring, or too cheesy and gaudy.

Publishers used whatever they could find and had less marketing nous or experience than they do today.

You might need to shield your eyes from this cover!

This awful cover gets the point across well enough. It's about knitting!

But its focus is also on the hairdo, baby and the glaring mismatch of colours! Buyers want to know more about knitting than family life or people looking into the mid-distance.

There are many other examples of bad book covers, but instead of focusing on them, let's move on.

The above example is just to prove a point.

EFFECTIVE BOOK COVERS

Now let's have a look at an effective book cover from the past.

There's nothing particularly special about the cover below, but it's a good example of how to do it well.

Huge lettering has always been important!

This cover is straightforward and uses a clean white font on a tasteful black background. The colours combine and it is effective.

Here's another example.

The author's name is in a large and tasteful white font. The title is even bigger and nicely contrasted in yellow. Check out the great background image with a vampire castle, full moon and hoards of bats!

This is a very effective book cover.

BEAUTIFUL BOOK COVERS

This is where things get interesting.

Beautiful covers are just that, beautiful, but aren't necessarily great from a marketing perspective because lettering is too small in comparison to backgrounds.

They focus too much on artwork and fail to get the name of the book or author clearly across.

Take a look at the examples below from the Sci-Fi Masterworks series.

Several covers have been included because they are so nice. Do you agree?

Either way, the artwork is more prominent than the author and title message.

The problem is the small lettering.

The book title is even smaller and stands out less.

What do you think about these covers?

Is the artwork enough and does it stand out enough?

MODERN AND UGLY BOOK COVERS

Fast forward to 2020+ and wording is now more important than artwork or design.

Book publishing companies believe that title + author is all that matters.

The examples below are not technically bad covers, but so simple and direct they are almost offensive.

Call it effective modern-day marketing if you wish. All you see is bright words on dark covers and not much else.

Sometimes the words are even scrawled in unrecognisable fonts or handwriting!

The electric green title takes up most of the page. However, you can see the background, so it's almost forgivable.

Now we have giant yellow letters on blue palm leaves.

The author name and title get your attention!

But that's it!

Here is giant red lettering on a dark background with a small image in the middle.

There's nothing essentially wrong with this book cover and the colour scheme is okay, but there's not much to it either.

Do you find this gaudy or offensive, or is it fine?

Think about these covers and decide whether you're likely to cherish them in the years to come? Or are 2020+ covers throwaway? Do they serve a single purpose, to get the message across and that's it?

Summary

Many years ago book covers were hit and miss. There was no guarantee of having a decent cover and they were sometimes diabolical.

Fortunately, we rarely get such abysmal covers these days.

Marketing moguls know that they need to get their message across in bold and clear print. This sometimes includes a nice cover or background as well.

Think of a typical Stephen King book with the name and title emblazoned on the front. It works.

But these days it's common to have massive text and not much else. This text often covers the entire page and can be bright, fluorescent and gaudy.

Is it going to get worse?

Does the general public have less taste or artistic choice in comparison to the past?

Why have glaring and scrawled titles and authors become so common?

Maybe we should go back to a time when book covers were beautiful to look at? When there was a mix of information and art?

Let me know what you think.

Richard Alex Jenkins

richardalexjenkins@gmail.com