Can You "Trust" Book Covers?
I've both been burned and scored before.
They say first impressions are important, after all. For casual perusers of books, may they be looking in bookstores or on scrolling on their devices, the front or spine of a book cover may be their first encounter with a book.
There are many design techniques that can be used to design a cover and stories may be deigned to be packaged and sold in various covers in its lifetime. As a reader, you’d hope what you see matches the story within a book in some sense so it works.
The worst is when it makes zero sense and is an injustice to representing the story.
You can find disgruntled readers complaining on this on Reddit forums, Goodreads lists, blog posts, YouTube ranking videos, and more.
But…why?
Well, the design team or artist (in-house or freelanced) would be given a brief and will be guided by the art director (AD) to create the cover. Word goes around that if the cover designers and illustrators are lucky, they may be able to read the author’s manuscript and pull from it to craft the cover with the help of the AD.
Now, I’m not a working professional in the publishing industry, but based on what I know about marketing, cover briefs are likely focusing (or prioritising) on positioning a book’s:
Uniqueness—aka, why in the world should a reader pick up this book versus another from the same section/genre/etc.? What makes this book different, full stop?
Genre & Familiarity—aka, what can readers expect from this book? How does it fit/not fit in with known story conventions? This is key for establishing a jumping off point for readers to find what they might like.
So, while a book cover ideally represents a story accurately, its ability to grab readers’ attention and get them to buy the book is the priority (publishing is a business, after all), so it may mean “accuracy” will, at times, be deprioritised in favour of what has been known to work and get people’s attention in previous/existing book covers. Hence, publishers may focus more on the aforementioned elements of genre and differentiation.
In action, this is how books in certain genres will develop and adopt a recognisable cover style. Even if it’s trendy, if it sells books, it’s a win for publishers. However, it doesn’t mean publishers haven’t gotten under fire for following cover trends for books that don’t quite align with the look of the trendy style and broad genre expectations, thus making readers feel tricked.
Compare crime novels to adult rom-com novels. While each book will have something to make it different, from afar, you can tell they share elements that blend the covers into each other and make it known that they fall into a certain genre.
To bookworms: do you have ways of not being fooled by covers? To book cover designers/artists: what do you think?
Until next time!