[HN Gopher] The most interesting book cover designs are often le...
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The most interesting book cover designs are often left on the
cutting room floor
Author : Vigier
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-12-12 20:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| arketyp wrote:
| Associating the author's face with the book makes sense for auto-
| fiction. Knausgard 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.
| solardev wrote:
| Am I the only one who prefers the final covers over the drafts,
| in pretty much all the cases?
|
| I think the finals have better typography and composition and are
| generally clearer than the drafts.
| drakonka wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There's a semi-recent trend in fantasy novels for the cover to
| have an abstract image instead of art. (Compare:
| https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_792452-T2/images/...
| for a "modern" cover, or https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_792452-T2/images/... for a
| "traditional" cover.) Art is better.
|
| 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.
| drakonka wrote:
| > 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.
|
| > There's a semi-recent trend in fantasy novels for the cover
| to have an abstract image instead of art. (Compare:
| https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_792452-T2/images/... for a
| "modern" cover, or https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_792452-T2/images/... for a
| "traditional" cover.) Art is better.
|
| 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 :)
| araes wrote:
| 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.
| sixo wrote:
| > 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?
| sequoia wrote:
| Some of these are like:
|
| DRAFT: conceptual work of art that the artist enjoyed making &
| might impress other artists
|
| FINAL: a book cover, a product of commercial design, designed to
| sell a book
|
| It's really not shocking that they went with the latter.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| phforms wrote:
| 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).
| pivo wrote:
| 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.
| loughnane wrote:
| 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.
|
| For example:
|
| - https://fradive.webs.ull.es/sem/fuentes1/IMG_4869.jpg
|
| - https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780872206007-us.jpg
|
| - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/e7/df/5ee7df38bef54cbf52a2...
|
| and so on.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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_.
| loughnane wrote:
| For sure to some people, but not others. That second example
| is hackett publishing and their sparse look is recognizable
| to some.
|
| Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/993/
| a1o wrote:
| There are definitely brands owned by the market itself that
| does that nowadays.
| caslon wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://64.media.tumblr.com/e18edf5a69e02f776837247d12385d67...
|
| 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.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Harry_Po...
|
| 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.
| loughnane wrote:
| 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.
| caslon wrote:
| Fair enough. I probably went a bit too hard into flamewar
| argument style with my reply. I hope you have a good day!
| infruset wrote:
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| Arrath wrote:
| 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!
| mopsi wrote:
| Those quotes from reviews that American publishers like to
| put on covers make books feel particularly cheap and
| disposable.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Fitzcarraldo Editions is currently trying to ape this for the
| English language market.
|
| https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/
| dsign wrote:
| 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.
| cosmojg wrote:
| > Alas, it takes longer to read blurbs :/
|
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| But it's unfortunately beneficial to sell books to people that
| won't ultimately enjoy them, so your second point illustrates
| part of the problem.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| It looks like you're missing the number one most important
| factor in cover design:
|
| Embed in to the image a large NETFLIX logo and add some text
| "HEY THIS BOOK IS WHAT THAT SHOW IS BASED ON".
|
| People love to reflect back on that, 10 years from now.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| > She'd been tasked with designing the book covers for the
| English translations of Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-part
| autobiographical novel, My Struggle
|
| I read "My Struggle," but I could have sworn it was by a German
| guy...
|
| I am trying to poke fun at the name of the book in a light
| hearted way.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| 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.
|
| Some examples off the top of my head: https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/I/91DEcBOO+UL._SL1500_.jpg
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/05/Extremely_lou...
| https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513YI87BvhL.jpg (although
| using Chip Kidd isn't really fair, it's just what popped in my
| head)
| ska wrote:
| That is certainly plausible.
|
| 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.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| Semiapies wrote:
| 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.
| colinb wrote:
| 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]
|
| [0] https://www.tor.com/2014/08/25/12-reasons-to-read-and-
| love-t... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Saturns-Children-Freyaverse-
| Charles-S... [2]https://www.amazon.co.uk/Saturns-Children-
| Freyaverse-Book-1-... [4]https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
| static/2010/03/cmap-6-...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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."
| iambateman wrote:
| This is true of all design when considering a large enough sample
| size.
|
| By definition, "interestingness" happens at the edges and not
| everyone can or should be on the edge.
| elliottkember wrote:
| 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.
| jess-desu wrote:
| 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.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Concept art is almost universally more interesting and creative
| than final design choices.
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