What kind of book cover do you like?

I generally prefer book covers with my name on them...

tbh, unless the famous painting was actually part of the plot of the book, or coincidentally very pertinant, I'd prefer to see something relevant to the book.

Although that said, there is one painting that if I saw it on the cover, I'd buy the book immediately. Can't remember the name of the painting. It's in the Musee D'Orsay, and it's life size, and there's this Moor see, and he's just beheaded someone. They used to have it placed so that you walked round a corner to be confronted with it pretty much nose to nose. It made an impression....

I like covers by great illustrators, like Michael Whelan or Alan Lee. For example, Whelan's cover for Cherryh's Invader and Lee's cover for the 1991 hardcover omnibus edition of Lord of the Rings.

Sometimes a cover with a single focal object on a plain background is effective. I remember a series of paperback editions of Lovecraft, each of which featured a nightmarish head floating in blackness.

Then there are those very simple covers that have become instantly recognizable. I'm thinking of the gold on burgundy of The Catcher in the Rye. I can spot this book from a vast distance. Ditto the green on white of Franny and Zooey. Though, alas, my Franny and Zooey has lost its cover from long use, sometimes in the bathtub...

I like book covers that are either very simple, or descriptively accurate to the story. Abstract images or collage-type things are my favorites in both cases.

Bright colors and dreamlike imagery catch my eye. I'm the same way with CD covers, I find. The more dreamlike and unusual it looks, the more I'm drawn to buying it, even though most of it turns out to be horrid screaming-type music!

The thing is, with book covers, I do think the imagery should have more to do with the plot than CD covers have to do with the songs contained therein. Otherwise I'll find it annoying that this beautiful cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Like a literary bait-and-switch.

I like/am attracted to dark book covers. I haven't read "Twilight" or "Eclipse" yet, but adore the covers.

Bright garish "artsy" covers with poorly proportioned humans on them make my stomach curdle. Especially if they are half naked. (the people, not the covers...) I've been more reluctant to read books where the illustrations have misshapen hands or legs/arms in awkward positions. Or skin tones that are too tan, too bizarrely orange.

The Dresden files new covers are brilliant. The new covers for LKH's series not so. I preferred the slightly monochromatic "is that a shoulder or a ...?" books instead. The fake tattoos are creepy.

I guess mostly it comes down to art snobbery/envy. I took design courses, would LOVE to paint like the masters, understand proportion and light and dark space balance, know how much time it takes to hone a craft such as figure painting and cringe when someone below my skills gets onto a cover. It's like reading a book that is published and finding all sorts of amateur mistakes you wouldn't make...yet they are on the shelf! Not fair, not cool.

Amy

I like covers to be rather vague, so I can draw my own conclusions about what the characters in the books look like and whatnot.

I don't like covers with photographs from the movie recently made from that novel. I have a copy of I am Legend with Will Smith on the front, and the main character from the actual novella version of the story is as totally, completely different from him as can be imagined. I don't like covers with photographs of people at all, really. I have a couple of books in my library that are dated by the hair styles in the photos on the cover, even though the stories inside are still timeless enough.

I prefer an artist's conception, a collage, something random or artsy. Not a famous painting, unless it has something to do with the book. Several of the novels we ordered for the students from a particular company have famous paintings on the covers which have absolutely no relation to the book, and the students are always saying, "Is that Maisie?" No. No, it's not. It's some random Matisse painting. Arrgggh!

Oh, and also, please, no spoilers on the cover. One version of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry shows the children huddled on the porch while the farm burns, which gives away a climatic plot point and doesn't happen until the very end of the book.

--Q

Quossum said:

I don't like covers with photographs from the movie recently made from that novel. I have a copy of I am Legend with Will Smith on the front, and the main character from the actual novella version of the story is as totally, completely different from him as can be imagined.
--Q

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This is a huge pet peeve of mine. The Ruins, by Scott Smith, has one of these, and I kept staring at the cover, thinking "Where are the little red flowers? Which character's head is that?"

Hate that.

Illustrated covers, with a kinda fantasy look usually do it for me. That's how my books would look...

I don't so much care about what the image is or where it comes from as I do about the actual layout and design. If it looks professional, I'm interested. If it looks like some assistant put it together with photoshop, no, I am not interested.

One thing that bugs me though... I almost always do NOT like "artist's renderings" of the main characters. Mainly because they never match up to how I envision the characters - even if it's how the author thought they should look. The paintings are never as good as my imagination. I started a sci-fi series where, for the first couple of books, the main character was portrayed from the back, kind of like an outline, or not at all. About the third book in, the main character was pictured, in full light, his face fully visible. I couldn't STAND the picture of him. I kept the cover bent back the entire time I read the book. Ugh!!! Not at all how I saw him.

So I guess I prefer vagueness when it comes to character specifics. Sure, show them with their signature green tie or .44 or WHATEVER, but please, no full faces. Leave a little room for my imagination.

The kind with my name on it!

JoNightshade said:

...One thing that bugs me though... I almost always do NOT like "artist's renderings" of the main characters. ...Sure, show them with their signature green tie or .44 or WHATEVER, but please, no full faces. Leave a little room for my imagination.

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Harry doesn't wear a hat.. but these covers are cool:

(the cover art for Dead Beat)
Click on the picture for Chris McGrath's website.

I prefer my covers don't have any kind of character rendition on them. A scene or an object relevant to the story works for me. I was lucky with my first two books (I designed a lot of the first one myself).

Books three and four when they're finished will likely be objects, too. The Weeping Woman should have a picture of Picasso's painting on it, and The Yearbook will hopefully have a tattered book on the cover.

I am drawn to simple book covers myself. Body parts and artist's renditions of characters turn me off. Covers with one dominant colour draw the eye, as do simple, strong fonts.

She_wulf, that one's cool because the face isn't fully revealed. Again, a dominant colour.

I like photographic covers, especially with close-ups of faces or with a person turned away from the camera.

I don't like pictures from the movie, or geometric patterns, and I really don't like cartoon covers (like the kind some chick lit books have).

Enraptured said:

... I really don't like cartoon covers (like the kind some chick lit books have).

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Although it makes them easy to spot on the shelves which makes selecting them when you're in the mood for a "funny" easier.

Dick Francis had some really good covers; collages of objects that meant nothing until you read the books and found them.

I dislike cartoon covers unless it's a book of cartoons, paintings that have nothing to do with the plot, romance covers where the characters bear no resemblance at all to the ones in the books. Or covers where the author's name takes up 90% of the available space.

On the other hand, I've always loved 50's pulp covers, so consider the source!

I adore simple covers, with like random photography of one or two objects. Also, covers with apples seem to draw my attention.

My favorite would be the one that causes readers to buy, buy, buy.