I actually like the final covers more for most of the examples used here.
This made me think about the cover design process for indie genre fiction. The common advice is to create a grid of 10-12 best-selling titles in the specific genre and niche that your book is in, and use that as a guide for your cover.
Are the fonts sans serif of serif? What are the most popular colors? Are most of them object covers or do they feature detailed characters? How many characters, and how zoomed-in are they? Where is the author name positioned and how large is it?
The thinking is that your own cover should fit perfectly into that grid. For new indie authors this can seem counter-intuitive, because the urge is to _stand out_. They think if they stand out, readers will be more likely to notice them and buy their book.
In reality, the safest bet is to only stand out _a little bit_ while still fitting in the aesthetic of successful books in the genre. Because genre fiction readers know what they like, and they'll look for covers that look like what they'll like. It can be a tricky balance: be _too_ generic in an oversaturated niche and you'll seem bland. But stand out _too much_ (to the point of not slotting nicely into that grid) and you'll be too weird for readers to click on. They'll go click on a cover that looks more like that other book they loved instead.
Some authors luck out or have such an established reader base that they'll buy any oddball cover - and they could even set the trends for future covers in the niche if so. But most of us small-fry can't afford to take that gamble if royalties are the goal, and the safer financial decision is usually to fit in.
> In reality, the safest bet is to only stand out _a little bit_ while still fitting in the aesthetic of successful books in the genre. Because genre fiction readers know what they like, and they'll look for covers that look like what they'll like.
I would expect more that genre fiction readers will be browsing the section where all of the books are in their genre, and the cover will completely fail to carry any further information about the genre.
You're better off with a cover that appeals to the reader, not a cover that looks like the cover on other similar books whose covers were chosen for reasons other than reader appeal.
> the cover will completely fail to carry any further information about the genre.
The cover, as selected by the above algorithm, will convey quite a bit of information about subgenre and niche and when it was written / how new or fresh it will be. To people already looking in the area, this is the most informative signal you can send: where does your book fit on the existing "landscape" of books within this genre that they have in their head?
> The cover, as selected by the above algorithm, will convey quite a bit of information about subgenre and niche and when it was written / how new or fresh it will be.
Since none of those things are considered by the above algorithm, this isn't possible.
> I would expect more that genre fiction readers will be browsing the section where all of the books are in their genre, and the cover will completely fail to carry any further information about the genre.
Yup, readers do definitely browse the section where the books in their genre are like you say. They also see book covers on Goodreads, TikTok (BookTok), YouTube (BookTube) Facebook, Instagram, book shelves, and a bunch of other popular places where they congregate. Whether they're browsing a dedicated section or not, if they're an avid reader of a certain genre or niche, they likely have expectations for what they want to read. Aside from a strong recommendation from a trusted source, the cover and blurb are the first things that will either catch their attention and communicate that this is a book that looks similar to other books they loved, or have them move on to another one that does.
Yup! The "abstract image" is what I meant by object cover. I disagree that object cover is better by default. Though I agree the specific _example_ of the object cover you linked is better than the specific example of the character cover you linked. You'll also note that the character cover you linked is for a book from 1994. That cover likely fit in very well with that niche at the time.
What's "better" ultimately depends on the goal and the market: if the goal is money and character covers are at the top of all the charts in those genres, a (more modern-looking) character cover will likely be "better". Right now there is definitely an object cover trend! Alternative covers are also popular in some genres now, like romance. In steamy romance, "manchest" covers used to be (and still are) especially popular, but some readers love to have a more tame paperback version with a nice object cover. This lets them take the book on the train or coffee shop without feeling awkward :)
The general issue is the same as fast food. McD does not in any significant way care about any of the 8,000,000,000 humans food preferences. Only aggregate.
If your market is selling billions of something, making niche stuff that sells 10,000 barely registers. With a market cap of $212.5B a 1% daily shift is $2B. Those sales don't register. It's the same issue it always is with capitalism. You think it's supposed to result in something, it doesn't.
Strategy: Make a cover that appeals to the broadest demographic blandly, yet appealingly. Don't insult anybody. Don't use imagery / technique / layout that drives away buyers. Don't appeal to any single individual's tastes, unless they drive huge sales. Effectively, SEO optimize your covers.
People's reactions may be "I like the final covers better". I get that, I think I do too. But I suspect that's because they're more like what we expect from book covers. They're safer and less experimental. A lot of times our aesthetic evaluations are just based on what seems more familiar—that 'mere exposure' effect—and we find post hoc reasons to justify a gut reaction. I'm not even sure that's a bad thing, from the publisher or the author's perspective: they just want a quick visual shorthand to tell people that a book might be for people like them. They're not trying for much more than that. But I want these designers to not be that cynical, and keep trying new things even if they just run up against brick walls, because that's the mechanism that slowly evolves visual design.
Some of the covers exhibit a fairly common problem with designer/artist work: That it's more made to showcase the mastery of the designer rather than fit the marketing for that author. For example "that author usually has some piano related cover. I know: I'll do the opposite." There is rarely a need for "experimental" (sometimes but rarely) - and for sure the artist shouldn't be too disappointed when their genius idea gets rejected (and they should have also submitted a more on point design.)
Then again the marketing brief in some projects is non-existent. The designer should prompt for some but at some point does what they can.
I think it is important that the designer gets a feel for the character and “vibe” of the book by actually reading the manuscript and gathering as much context information as they can, ideally in direct exchange with the author(s) to align with their artistic vision. Book cover design can be an art in itself and as a reader, I appreciate it if it is done well and communicates some of the subtleties and nuances of the content in an interesting way. Of course, as you mentioned, it should not be about the ego/self-marketing of the designer, but that does not exclude artistic expression.
I believe it is a disservice to the author and the reader to focus solely on the marketing side of things. After all, the design of the book is part of the product, which, as a whole, sets the frame for the reading experience. Physical books today have to compete with digital content and ebooks, so as a reader I would expect that more effort is being made to make a product that also looks and feels good and not only carries the content to my eyes. That also applies to the layout and typesetting of the inner pages, which is unfortunately often careless and not aligned with the cover design (let alone the choice of paper and binding, which is of course seldom in control of the designer).
Physical books compete with digital versions - that would be a reason for LESS budget for the paper cover. Some has to be devoted to the digital marketing.
Some authors have the luxury of going all in on the artistic. That does exist. For most though, the book needs to sell or there won't be a next book. Constraints like that are what a marketing or design brief is supposed to explain. It's stuff the publisher understands long before they call in the cover artist or layout designer.
I'm with you on the surprising choices we often encounter. But then these problems were common when paper was king. The distractions of the move to digital won't help. For example, far too little margin next to a stiff binding. For example, ebooks with ludicrous epub rendering (on book readers that don't sit on the publisher's desk). Puzzling.
I've seen great books ruined by their cover. And with them, authors who had dedicated years of their life to what turned out to be a great story, but not a great book--because of the cover. That's why I tend to read blurbs and get an idea of the subject matter, instead of putting much attention on the cover. Alas, it takes longer to read blurbs :/
My personal opinion is that a good cover should, in this order, do the following:
- Bring a mystery to the reader, or summarize the story in a fun way.
- Be honest, and tell the reader if the story is for them or not. If the story is fun, philosophical, and gay, there should be cues of that on the cover. It's a service you do to yourself as a writer, specially when you are not writing mainstream. Here's an example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HX3wweY3S_Zpf1iD7a118IWNy96...
- Be visually pleasant.
- Distant forth: be "trendy". The cover should do service to the book and the story first, and only in a second place, be a resume piece for the graphical designer. With that said, most books don't make money, and sometimes the only way a writer can get a cover at a reasonable price is by compromising and letting the graphical artist do what they want.
Aren't there just plain too many books by now to browse? And the few browsable places are carrying fewer and fewer of them. (And I have complained before about online stores and library catalogs not being very browsable yet.)
And so I switched completely to third party recommendations. Sometimes very tenuous - but still better than other methods. I keep a deep file of notes such as "police in exotic places", "commando/secret agent/police stories from Egypt" - or "time travel, magic and bureaucracy".
In parallel, I keep notes on authors' writing style. I can then favor the ones I usually like and push down the list the ones that get on my nerves.
The cover is now irrelevant. - But perhaps will come back in some variant when catalogs become browsable again. Perhaps the new format will allow several images rather than just one. Perhaps will completely separate title and author from the cover? Will allow more than author and story blurbs? How will the cover evolve for the online-first world?
Tangential thought, but this sounds like it might make for an actually good application of large language models: reading blurbs (or entire books) and making recommendations accordingly.
Yes! Only slightly joking: The AI overlords might become useful after all (to us - they can do what they want when they are on the clock) by doing a better job of lining up novels for our consumption. They might even customize them on the fly. For example fixing the characters' gender to something they know we will prefer.
For that matter, they might edit some authors. Who greatly need it.
That brings us back to misleading blurbs. They will have to fix that too - which they can, by reading the thing before we do.
I get that this is just how books are sold, but I like the look of books without pictures on the cover. It means I've got nothing but the words shaping my thoughts.
It's interesting that historically, in France, the more prestigious a publisher is, the more bland the cover. Book covers with colors all over the place feel cheap over here.
And this french idea goes all the way to omitting any kind of blurb. It's pretty shocking. There is no information whatsoever on the book itself beyond author, title - and publisher's name because that's important /s. ... The book may as well not be on the shelf.
Oh I would love for my covers not to be blighted by "New York Times Bestselling author" or "Now a popular <TV channel> show!" and the like. Keep the blurb on the back, but don't pollute the cover!
The minimalist presentation style is in itself marketing for all of these. The "Moral Philosophy" cover isn't set that way for any actual constraints, and what I presume is a set of initials or an abbreviation in the first issue isn't there for practical reasons; someone had to go out of their way to make a way to press that, if it's old enough, or to design it, if it's newer.
Your thoughts are shaped by the minimalist presentation of the books; it provokes a feeling of prestige. Minimal covers have been very common with Ivy publishers for their non-GA books for decades, and not because it's less manipulative. It just sells better.
The American first edition books in the best-selling series "Harry Potter" are actually a better example of what you're going for, because they were printed in such a mass-market fashion. If you take the book sleeves off of them, there are no words at all, ignoring the spine.
This is a good thing, though. Buy American hardcover books with book sleeves! More often than not, you can take them off, and they look exactly like this.
Yeah, I get that its part of the design, but since there's no photo it doesn't predispose me to anything on the inside in the same way the ones in the linked article do. In any case, I do like it better.
The Harry Potter example is a good one, and you're right about taking the sleeves off, that's my go to move.
I think, outside of some classic-looking hardbound books, too simple a cover--e.g. #2--from an unknown author would scream low-rent work. It's totally unfair. I sort of hate having to get a decent cover design for a book that's going to be mostly digital downloads. But I sort of feel I have to do something.
I saw someone recently mention that book covers are really samey now (BIG BOLD title and author name) and that's because they need to stand out on phones for ebook stores, audiobook stores etc.
I remember book covers having so much more personality about 20 years ago.
To be fair, so many illustrated book covers were designed and chosen without reading the book - or perhaps deliberately misleading the customer as to the contents. No fit to the story or complete misreading of the story. This did become tiresome.
It felt like the artist had some paintings ready to go and the publisher just picked one from THAT artist - the one they usually like.
Really, book covers were getting terrible by the late 90s and early Aughts. I remember the especially cringeworthy period where a few female Asian-American writers got semi-autobiographical books out, and the publishers slapped vaguely arty photos of bowls of rice on them.
It's a bit like the transition from LP records to CDs (and somewhat to tapes). With so much less room, covers became simpler and blander, at least in aggregate.
I'm interested in the way covers vary for different countries. Even when the language is the same.
The Josh Kirby covers for Discworld [0] were a big draw when I saw them in Ireland the UK. The covers in the US and Australia much less so.
/u/cstross [4] has written in his blog about how little control an author has over the cover of their work. That's visible when comparing the UK and US version. Slinky sexbot in the US [1] vs galleons in space (or whatever that is) for the UK version [2]
It's funny, because just reading your description I assumed the US cover was a result of sex selling especially in the American market and not all that accurate to the book, but then I read the blurb and it turns out it's about...a slinky sexbot.
I assume anyone seriously in the book business has a fairly well-calibrated idea of roughly what a book cover should look like to sell a book. And I imagine if you really studied book covers for various genres, you'd see a lot of pretty common patterns.
I don't know about the book business. But in other fields, it's shocking how often marketing does not provide a marketing brief when asking for artwork. Some more professional artists will prompt and help put one together, but that uses up quite a bit of time = budget.
Associating the author's face with the book makes sense for auto-fiction. Knausgård has an appropriately photogenic one congenial with the tone of the book series. The draft on the other hand is way too playful and does not reflect expectations, in my opinion. As for the other drafts vs final version, I can't say I prefer either over the other much.
A friend of mine wrote a book. The publisher chose the title and the cover, and my friend absolutely hates both. He had no say in it, and his name is now associated with both the title and the cover art.
Echoing most everyone else about preferring the final covers. A lot of the alternate versions feel very "self-published," especially The Refugee Ocean.
For me, a lot of the unused designs have some issues with scale and balance in the context of a book cover. When sitting on an endcap or on a display table in the airport, the imagery should support the copy in its starring role. Even the iconic Twilight covers, which had strong images, had a very distinct text treatment for the title that helped brand the book series.
If every book cover is selected out of, say, half a dozen candidates, and if it's not selected for the property of "most interesting", then it's statistically more likely than not that the most interesting ones are among the rejects.
This is true for any property of book covers that is not being selected for.
"The { most colorful | least colorful | most complex | simplest | most realistic | most abstract | ... } book cover designs are often left on the cutting room floor."
The final cover for Karl Ove Knausgaard's book is what caused me to pick it up years ago in a bookstore and buy it. Not sure I would have noticed the original design.
This made me think about the cover design process for indie genre fiction. The common advice is to create a grid of 10-12 best-selling titles in the specific genre and niche that your book is in, and use that as a guide for your cover.
Are the fonts sans serif of serif? What are the most popular colors? Are most of them object covers or do they feature detailed characters? How many characters, and how zoomed-in are they? Where is the author name positioned and how large is it?
The thinking is that your own cover should fit perfectly into that grid. For new indie authors this can seem counter-intuitive, because the urge is to _stand out_. They think if they stand out, readers will be more likely to notice them and buy their book.
In reality, the safest bet is to only stand out _a little bit_ while still fitting in the aesthetic of successful books in the genre. Because genre fiction readers know what they like, and they'll look for covers that look like what they'll like. It can be a tricky balance: be _too_ generic in an oversaturated niche and you'll seem bland. But stand out _too much_ (to the point of not slotting nicely into that grid) and you'll be too weird for readers to click on. They'll go click on a cover that looks more like that other book they loved instead.
Some authors luck out or have such an established reader base that they'll buy any oddball cover - and they could even set the trends for future covers in the niche if so. But most of us small-fry can't afford to take that gamble if royalties are the goal, and the safer financial decision is usually to fit in.