Irremovable stickers: why aren't they arranged well?
Trust badges have their place in marketing
Look, marketing-wise, it would be a tiny bit silly to not capitalise on selling points of your stories, such as movie-tie-ins and awards, and inform new readers of them through little printed-on stickers on covers.
It’d be nice to envision the day editing the covers to add stickers is spearheaded by someone who has compositional knowledge. (This interview with a cover designer discussed this possibility!)
At the end of the day, book covers are not just pieces of art made out of self-indulgence.
It has a business purpose.
It must market the story it is representing. Placing trust badges such as irremovable stickers, even if it’s done sloppily from a visual communication perspective, sends a message to readers that the book is artistically meritable and can be trusted to be satisfying to some capacity.
Additionally, some like “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” trail after authors and get emblazoned across all their covers of books published prior to and after ‘earning’ the badge. In doing so, publishers are telling readers “Hey, this author has more works you’d enjoy and be satisfied with.” It draws attention. On paper, it makes books and authors with trust badges stand out, more special and guaranteed money-makers.
Arranging the trust badges to look good on book covers would not be a high priority.
TLDR: trust badges get readers to trust the book, pick it up, and buy it. Marketers trust them to communicate a book or even the author’s value to readers. As long as trust badges are noticeable and relayed to readers, then it doesn’t matter if the covers look ugly with badly placed irremovable stickers.