Frankenstein’s monster was a combination of a bits and pieces that originally didn’t go together, but the good old doc threw them together, and by George, now they fit. A book cover is a lot like that monster—bits and pieces of different disciplines. The right bits and pieces will bring a cover to life. The wrong pieces, however, can pull down the wrath of heaven—or at least the wrath of ticked-off fans.

Art, Design, and Marketing

Art, Design, and Marketing are the major pieces that go into the cover that’s staring back at you from the bookshelf. If the Art is beautiful to you, and the Design strikes your fancy, then you might hear the book calling to you, “Buy me! Or at least pick me up.”

If you read the book and like it, then the Marketing of the book was dead on.

Each of these pieces—Art, Design, and Marketing (which influences Art and Design)—can make or break a book.

Disclaimer

Let’s take a look at a few of the latest science fiction and fantasy book covers. As taste in Art and Design is highly subjective, keep in mind that these are just my opinions. There are covers I love that other people hate, and vice versa. But hopefully I can give sound reasons as to why these covers fly or flop.

Whatever-ness by Degrees

There are degrees of goodness and degrees of badness as demonstrated by the chart below, Whatever-ness by Degrees, whose design is already approaching badness due to haste, which leads us to our first category.

(Note on color choices: I am not implying that Blue is a good color and that Red is a bad color. In actuality, Blue is a cool color, and Red is a hot color, which is also not saying that Blue wears sunglasses and that Red wears cocktail dresses. Likewise, purple is not a mediocre color—but this particular shade of purple is.)

Badness

In order to know goodness, we must know badness. So, to get our kicks in sooner rather than later, here are the nominees for worst book cover I’ve seen this week.

Not only is the design bad on these books, the art is bad or inappropriate to the type of book its portraying.

Anybody who knows anything about The Lies of Locke Lamora knows that this cover looks more like a romance than a fantasy. Why couldn’t the publisher have stuck with the beautiful hard cover version? The first version is a good example of how bad art can ruin a cover. For example, the fonts used on both versions are very similar, but fit together better on the blue version because Blue equals Goodness.

The movie tie-in version of The Prestige has an excuse. Evidently the Hollywood designers didn’t get hi-res movie stills to the book publishers in time to get something ready for the press. To my knowledge, Hollywood had well over a year to get the pictures to the publisher. But either way, the design on this one is not much better than a poster to a local battle of the bands. They should’ve stuck with the original Trade version, shown on the right, and not just because it has cool rabbits on it.

But Bridge of Souls has no such excuse. The art here is subpar–does anyone recognize the Poser models placed as guards?–and the book looks like the majority of self-published books out there. Do I dare reveal the publisher? Yes, I dare. This one is published by Eos, one of the bigwigs in the science fiction and fantasy publishing industry. Shame on them!

Marketing Reasons

Sometimes publishers will allow bad covers through for pure marketing reasons. For example, a fantasy reader who reads and likes Robert Jordan will probably buy books with covers that look like those from Jordan’s books. Look at the similarities between The Eye of the World, The Magic of Recluse, and The Runelords. These are mediocre covers, but the books sell like pancakes because of the familiarity that the readers get from seeing these.

I imagine this is what the art department was thinking when they put together Tobias Buckell’s latest book, Ragamuffin. This one has good design and mediocre artwork, but when all is said and done, it will probably appeal to the readers who liked Toby’s first book, Crystal Rain. If Tor were to put just a spaceship on the second book, the visual continuity of the series would be minimal and might ostracize Toby’s core readers.

But that hasn’t kept Tor from changing the look of a series in the middle of the series, as we’ve seen with Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy. To Tor’s credit, though, they’ve done their best to keep the fonts the same. And I love Jon Foster’s art for both of these. People are going to hate me for saying this, but as much as I love the first cover, the cover for Book 2 has is more striking, has more contrast. When the eye sees contrast, the brain says, “Stop and look at that.”

Audience Appropriateness

Sometimes a book is released with a cover and the publisher suddenly realizes that they’re targeting a completely different audience with the scene on the cover. I suspect that’s what happened with John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. There’s good art and good design on both of these covers, but one is more appropriate to the audience. The cover with people on it appeals to the audience for Ragamuffin, readers looking for a swashbuckling adventure, while the spaceship cover appeals more to the hard-core science fiction fans.

Sometimes a publisher will release multiple covers of the same book and then shelve them in separate parts of the bookstore. Again, this is related to appropriateness to the audience. Generally speaking, a younger audience will be attracted by different things on a cover than an older audience–thus the difference between Garth Nix’s books. Top row is meant to be shelved in YA, and the bottom row is meant for adults. I think both covers are beautifully designed.

In the world of book marketing, less art and more design corresponds to being “more adult.” Occasionally this is to the detriment of the book being marketed, and sometimes it’s to its benefit as shown above (Sabriel and Lirael) and below.

Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell has one of the simplest, most-effective designs I’ve seen. Some of the books were published with white text on black, and some were released with black text on white. Both results are striking. But for some reason, a photograph was added to the Trade version of the same book, probably because Marketing said, “People who buy Trade paperbacks want photographs!” Though the Trade isn’t a bad design per se, the mass market version of the book looks a lot more like the hardcover, but available this time in black and red.

Market appropriateness is also seen in the YA and Adult versions of Ender’s Game, although one could argue that the YA version here looks more like a middle grade book.

Goodness

Now, I risked being repetitive in showing Card’s books above only because I want to show you this beaut, the hardcover reissue of Ender’s Game. The design on this is glorious! But then again, simplicty in design attracts my eye almost every time.

Now, on to more goodness. I can’t say enough about the balance between good art, good design, and good marketing on the covers below. But I think it would be better for the covers to speak for themselves. (The text that follows may appear to be just jokes about birds, and girls, and guns and books. But I’m not joking. These are some of the best covers I’ve seen lately.)

Another girl with a gun below. Although, I hear the following fails in the marketing department by snagging readers who may not like this book. But design-wise, it’s great. I bought it for a friend because of the cover alone.

What’s better than a girl with a gun? A girl with a book!

. . . or a bird! (This one’s just mediocre without the bird. I’m serious!)

. . . or even better . . . a girl with a polar bear! (This one just might be my favorite.)

Or a cover with no girl but with lots of cool buildings!

Or one of the handful of Daw’s well-designed covers!

I could go on with the pictures, but as you can see, I’m running out of words for describing awesomeness. So, let me end with a few random notes about book watching.

Book Watching

Do you have your binoculars ready? You do? Silly you, one doesn’t need binoculars to go book watching. All you need is a place with books and your own two eyes.

Watch Tor books and Pyr books. These two are the best in the industry for good design and good art. Pyr is still a little hit and miss, but when they nail a cover, they hammer the goodness spot on.

Ace and Roc are producing some nice covers these days, as the Greywalker covers show. I’m still a little disappointed, however, in what they’re producing in their fantasy markets.

Del Rey marches to the tune of their own drummer as they try to make all their books look mainstream. In my opinion, this publisher could use a design facelift, as much of what I see coming from them is pretty boring.

Baen is known for mediocre design with mediocre art, but they cater well in the marketing category. Their brand of art and design, though mediocre, is eye-catching, and their readers pick these books up because they like the kinds of books this brand touts.

Daw is consistently bad in their design (though not as bad as the design of Eos’s Bridge of Souls). However, somehow Daw is able to make Tad Williams’ covers look fabulous.

Many artists are pushing the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy covers–so many that I don’t have room to list them all. Here are just a few of my favorites (click the link to go to their respective websites):

Donato Giancola, Stephan Martiniere, John Jude Palencar, and Jon Foster.

A great website for cover art information is Irene Gallo’s blog, the Art Department. Irene is the art director at Tor, and she does a pretty dang good job at it, too.

Well, there you go. We’ve gone from badness to goodness. These are only my opinions. Whether or not you agree with me, take a gander at the covers the next time you’re in the bookstore and think about how the pictures and the designs are affecting you. Use the Wheel of Whatever-ness, if you have to, and begin appreciating book cover design for what it is: Frankenstein’s monster.

About the author:

Isaac Stewart works as an animator for video games at NinjaBee–he is not responsible for any blindness that may result from viewing the link to his employer’s website. He has done book design and artwork in his days, and his horridly out-of-date portfolio can be found at his website Nethermore.com.

In addition to loving art and wanting a yurt, he also did the maps and interior art for the Mistborn Trilogy, which makes him eligible for Hugo Award nominations this year. He encourages you to nominate him if you think his goodness is awesome.

Thanks go to his writing group and Shawn Boyles for suggesting some of the covers used.