(Note: "Priggish" is an adjective describing someone who acts in a self-righteously moralistic way, or as though they find themselves superior to others. Synonyms to "priggish" are "sanctimonious", "holier-than-thou", and "smug". It can also be compared to other fun words, such as "Pecksniffian" and "schoolmarmish".)
Dear reader(s)! What you are about to witness is what I would like to call "not a typical post for this particular book blog". Fear not, though; it is still book related. However, I want to delve a bit deeper on one specific topic. Having read the title, you of course already know of it, but I will make it clear once more.
This post is about my personal pet peeves regarding book covers in general. All of the aspects of covers mentioned in this post are ones I've encountered during my years of collecting and reading books. I mean not to bring wrath upon authors, models, photographers, illustrators, cover designers, or publishers. I have some level of respect and appreciation for every individual who has chosen a path that has led them to work with books professionally. That being said, there are details and qualities to book covers that I honestly don't enjoy, and I might go so far as to say that I strongly dislike some of them. It is my hope that you shall not find me priggish on the matter (a word I've taken the opportunity to use today). These are simply my personal preferences and should you not agree with them, that is perfectly fine, and I'd like to hear about your viewpoint on pet peeves regarding book covers.
Now that we've gotten these disclaimers out of the way, I think we should ask ourselves an important question; How does one go about criticising the motif of a book cover? Surely, it should be regarded as a piece of art. Let us humour that thought, and avoid getting into the long and avoidable discussion of “what art really is”. We shall say that any book features a piece of art on its cover. The one exception might be covers that are simply blank and hold only the title and author on the spine… However, as there are blank canvases being called art out there in the world, I suppose we will not exclude blank covers. And once we have stated that all book covers are art, we must decide for ourselves what we consider good art. What is ‘beautiful’, what pleases the eye? I’m certain that the answer for this question varies greatly based upon who is asked, and therefore I would say that there is little right or wrong here. To an extent (and that extent is arguable), all art holds some level of beauty, for it is pretty to someone. At least, in this case, it was pretty enough to make it onto a book cover. It was approved by not only the artist, but also by the publisher and (I would assume and hope) by the author. What I mean to say is clear; beauty in art is heavily subjective. I might find a font pretty, whereas you might find it downright garrish. One person wants to see little else than a title and minor details surrounding it, while another wishes for images of visual depth and perhaps action. My preferences and opinions are mine to have, and I have a right to them. Just as you have a right yo yours.
The other part of this topic is the quality of a cover. How does it feel, physically? What is the texture like? What of the spine and stiffness? Is it big or small? Hardcover or paperback? In this area, too, we are all bound to have our pet peeves and preferences.
So with all of this said, I will begin to explain my personal pet peeves in regards to book covers and physical qualities of such.
I’ve decided to go for a soft approach first and work myself towards my greatest pet peeves. For this first one, I want to talk about very plain covers. I’m referring to covers that mostly consist of a large title and little else. I want to make it clear, first, that not all covers like this are necessarily bad; many leather bound classics with this style are beautiful, such as my collection of Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes stories. Even some modern books, like “Swing Time” by Sadie Smith, manage to pull off the look. However, while these have succeeded, others have failed. Below are some examples to help you understand what I’m trying to describe as ‘bad’ plain covers:
These are not necessarily unpleasant to look at, which is why I’m listing this as the pet peeve I’m least passionate about. Nevertheless, I look at these and feel almost like they are just teasers for the actual covers that will be released at a later date. This is especially true for “Carve the Mark” by Veronica Roth and “Heartless” by Marissa Meyer. Again, they’re not ugly, but I want something more from them. They’re simply unsatisfying And that’s why this is one of my book cover pet peeves.
The second minor pet peeve that I want to address is not too important, so I won’t spend much time on it. This one is about font that are either unpleasant to look at or which don’t fit well with the rest of the cover. Usually, this isn’t something I pay a lot of attention to, but when I do, it’s because the font really stands out as off. Examples of this are as follow:
I want to mention that I appreciate a font that stands out in general; anything that isn’t Times New Roman or similar is a step in the right direction. However, sometimes that step leads to a fatal fall down a set of stairs. In the case of “Kings of the Wyld” by Nicholas Eames and “Rör mig inte” (“Shatter Me”) by Tahereh Mafi, both the fonts and bright colours miss the mark. The colours clash too much with the colour theme of the rest of the cover and the fonts look sort of cheap and out of place, or hastily chosen without much thought or care. With “The Final Empire”, the font appears cheap to me because it looks taken from a website like Dafont. Don’t get me wrong; Dafont has some really cool and original fonts, but this one isn’t one of them…
The next small thorn in my side will be similar to a later point on this list, but in many cases this doesn’t annoy me as much as the latter. This one has to do with pictures of people on the cover. In this point of the list, I want to focus on pictures that either don’t show faces, or where the face isn’t the main problem of the cover. Like with plain covers, this can be and has been done well in the past, but in other cases it flops completely. By using photographs of models, the cover artist heavily restricts themselves in how they can make those models look like the characters in the book. Rather than hiring someone to illustrate the characters, a picture is used. This can often cause disgruntlement for me, especially when the models look nothing at all like what I imagined in my head based on descriptions in the book. Here are some examples of that:
I would mentioned covers with pictures of faces that look odd or don't fit well with character descriptions, but seeing as that is another point that will appear later in the list, I shall hold myself back. Since this current point is pretty clear and self explanatory, I will move on.
By now, we’ve all had our fair share of unoriginal cover designs. In fact, some covers even share the exact same image of the exact same model (see “Unraveling” by Elizabeth Norris and “Resten får du ta reda på själv” by Lauren Oliver). I always appreciate a cover that manages to both be aesthetically pleasing and stands out in the crowd. Note that an unoriginal cover doesn’t have to be visual torture. Here are some covers that are very similar to one another and therefore automatically not very unique:
They don’t look incomplete like the plain covers, but they certainly aren’t fresh and new in any way. I understand that creating unique and original cover designs for every book is an impossible and unreasonable demand; there just might not be the time and resources for that. However, I wish that maybe publishers would hire a greater variety of artists to work on cover designs. Perhaps that would make for a wider variety of motifs and styles that would blow like a fresh breeze through the world of book covers.
We’re moving on to a group of cover styles that, in my opinion, never hit the mark. I’m talking, of course, about movie covers. Say what you will about movie adaptations; we must agree that it’s good that certain books get enough recognition and attention to make it to the screen. In many cases, movies can prompt people to get into books. If you are like me, though, you’ll often prefer the book over the movie (one exception to this rule would be “Vampire Diaries” by L.J. Smith). If you are even more like me, you’ll appreciate the original cover design over the movie cover. Call me old fashioned, but I want my books to look like books, not like movie posters or plain adds for the movie. I understand that it’s ‘effective marketing’, but to me it comes off as cheap and typically not very pretty. Here below are some examples of original cover design vs. movie covers:
Not to say that the original covers designs are always perfection, but at least they’re not movie covers… What’s worse is that if the movie flops and they print movie covers, people might not buy the book because it looks like that bad movie they saw! Something like that could crush the potential of a magnificent book.
We’re starting to move towards elements that can truly make a cover unpleasant to look at, and we’ll start by looking at some poorly or obviously photoshopped covers. I admit that there can be a certain charm regarding covers like this, but sometimes that charm isn’t really enough. Bad photoshop can lead to downright embarrassing cover designs that are ill proportioned, weirdly coloured, and tacky. Here are some examples of that:
There are of course better/worse(?) examples of this, but I wanted to use books that I actually own myself. They might not come off as downright ugly, but they don’t exactly look polished.
Next up is something that might be a bit unexpected, and that’s white covers. I’m not sure if white covers in general is a newer trend that’s only been going on for like the past decade or two, but it’s certainly relevant in this time period. White covers have sort of taken over its own little corner of the fantasy genre, and I’m just not a fan. I’m talking about the white canvas covers with some image and title on top of it. I’ve also noticed that there are a lot of high fantasy/adult fantasy novels that look very alike and that all follow the same ‘template’, it seems. Examples of exactly that are as follows:
Despite the fact that I really like the UK white covers for all of Sanderson’s books, I still think that this trend is boring. And it’s not the illustrations themselves that are the problem; it’s the white background and the black- and white look with a slight splash of colour. Some covers pull it off better than others, but overall I just think it’s a dull trend. The white background makes the cover look flat and unfinished, like the artist had two weeks to draw the illustration, but only thirty minutes to put it on the cover and finish the whole thing.
Another major thing with white covers is that it’s truly impractical. As with anything that is white, it’s doomed to get dirty, and there’s little one can do about it. You can’t put it in a bag or hold it with slightly dirty hands without it going from pure white to brown/grey and splotchy real fast. I can’t be the only one who has a problem with white covers!
We’re getting closer to the end, but we have a few more pet peeves to go. I’m going to go ahead and say this; there are too many book covers in this world that were ruined by faces. This point is very similar to pictures of people on the cover, but I think faces in general are worse. Especially closeups. It doesn’t fit with my personal aesthetics at all, and there’s the obvious problem of the face on the photo not matching up with the characters in the book. They might share some features, but that doesn’t stop me from imagining the characters very different from the faces on the cover. This is not a problem that’s unavoidable, which makes it more frustrating. Illustrations often do a much better job of portraying the characters; a task that pictures almost always fail at. Here are some examples of book covers with faces on them:
I must mention that some cover artists have done a good job with this style. Examples of that are “Days of Blood & Starlight” by Laini Taylor, “The Bane Chronicles” by Cassandra Clare, and “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue” by Mackenzi Lee, where it’s clear that a lot of thought and time was spent behind making the face match the character’s features as much as possible.
The next one has less to do with the art of the cover, and has more to do with the text on it. What I mean is that blurbs can be a bit of a downer on covers. Either they’re a bit silly, unnecessary, or just take over completely. A few blurbs are understandable, but five? Come on! That just comes off as bragging, in my opinion. It’s an annoying marketing trick to dump somewhat known names and titles unrelated to the actual book in order to lure people in. An abundance of blurbs easily looks cluttered, more so if they’re all over the front cover. It irks me to a certain extent that so much importance is seemingly put in blurbs, for I think we could all do just as well without them. Here are a few covers with many/long/unnecessary blurbs on the front:
Trigger words: Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games, Potter, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Lauren Oliver... Short or long, most of them are completely useless. It's great if authors read each others books and give each other feedback, but do you have to tell the world? No.
Hand in hand with that pet peeve comes this next one; the little texts on the front or back that say horribly generic and useless things like “They’ll need each other to survive” or “Power is a dangerous game” or “Knowledge is power”. I find it so silly! And basically every fantasy novel has one! More often they’re on the back, but they’re twice as annoying when they’re placed on the front, often to take the place of an absent blurb. Some miss the mark more than others, truthfully, but they’re all more or less embarrassing… Feast your eyes upon these examples:
“Power is a dangerous game”, “A love doomed from the start”, “One choice can transform you”. They’re all vague enough to be relevant to whatever fantasy novel you pair them with, and they’re often written in rather small text, like the eyes are just supposed to skim over them and not really notice them. Dear cover designer; do you believe you can hide these embarrassing ‘slogans’ by making the text small? If you don’t want them to be seen, remove them completely! Please!
We’re nearing the end, but before we reach the greatest cover pet peeve of all, I will mention another grudge of mine. This one I believe I share with many fellow book lovers. It’s regarding cover changes in series. Have you experienced buying books in a series, only for the publisher to take a sudden turn and completely change the style of the covers for the rest of the series? We ask ourselves why… Is this not a terrible marketing strategy? Readers of the series will recognise the style of the original covers and become confused when the rest of the series looks very different. Is it even the same series? What happened? What was the motivation behind the change? In some cases, the original covers are pretty bad, and the publishers probably realised that and wanted to change it. However, other times the changes seem severely unmotivated. Worst is when we’ve got several books in the series with matching covers, and then they change. It’s more acceptable if they change their minds just after the first book, but after the third one? Shame on you! Here are some examples of original covers vs. cover changes:
The Swedish translations of “Ruby Red” and “The Diviners” hurt an extra lot, because the original covers were ones that I really loved!
My greatest pet peeve has nothing to do with the look of a cover. It could look beastly or beautiful, however there is one thing that can ruin even the best of covers; the physical quality of the cover. Hardcovers and paperbacks both can have their faults. When it comes to hardcovers, they’re usually more sturdy than paperbacks and can take more of a beating. Nevertheless, the spine can become skewed when reading and will often remain so permanently afterwards. Some hardcovers are also too stiff; the pages seem glued together and the book is difficult to hold open. One might even have to “break it” open by bending it the wrong way in order to make it more flexible.
Regarding paperbacks, I have more to say. That’s simply because more things can go wrong with a paperback. Paperbacks are subject to some of the worst cover qualities out there. I’m talking especially about stiff covers and easily breakable spines. They’re simply the worst! If I constantly have to worry about breaking the spine because of a stiff paperback, that might affect my experience of reading in a negative way. In some cases, it’s impossible to avoid breaking the spine no matter how careful one is. To mention some sadly memorable stiff spines, there’s “The Priory of the Orange Tree” by Samantha Shannon, “Death Most Definite” by Trent Jamieson, and “The Raven King” by Maggie Stiefvater (that one also had a very shiny and poor quality cover overall). I had to be extremely careful with these books, to the point where reading them for an extended period led to stiff muscles and headaches. And those are all books that I otherwise enjoyed!
I really appreciate good physical quality in books. I want my spines to be sturdy and my paperbacks to be floppy and bendable. I want my hardcovers to be easy to hold open and for the spine to hold its original shape.
Honorable pet peeve mentions: When the author’s name is several times the size of the title and takes up half the front cover. When the dust jacket is fitted off-center on a hardcover book or when the print on a paperback spine is slightly off, showing strips of either the front or back cover on the spine. When the publisher’s logo isn’t adjusted to fit the colour themes of the rest of the cover. When the rest of the cover is beautiful and detailed, but the spine is boring and plain (single colour, dull font). When the cover has a ‘matte’ finish of the kind that easily starts looking splotchy at just a simple touch. Too many award stickers cluttering the front.
Those are the pet peeves I've managed to awaken in myself over the past years. In the end, surface
related pet peeves aren't as important as those regarding the contents of the books (which I might get to
in a future post).
Do you share any pet peeves with me? Am I wrong about something? Let me know! Thanks for reading
this post, and have a great day.
