Top Ten Cover Trends

It’s well known that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But, considering that the cover is often the first thing a reader sees when they pick up a book, having a well-designed cover is certainly very important. I’m linking up with The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday again, and this week we’re talking about covers, either what we like to see on them, or what we don’t like. I’m going to talk about both, listing five things I like to see, and then five that I’m not so keen on. I’ve added examples of covers with the elements I mention, however I certainly haven’t read all the books.

Five Cover Trends I Like:

1. Covers that look like Paintings

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Some of my favourite covers have pictures that look like they’re been painted. I love the colours and the cracks in the paint, and the beautiful old look you can get from this style of cover. River Secret, and the other books in this series all have the most beautiful fake painted covers.

2. Covers with Faces

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I have a special fondness for covers with faces, especially when, as with Splintered, the face is enhanced by other pretty things, like those butterflies. I think that what attracts me to this kind of cover the most is the fact that I can see a picture of one of the characters and that draws me in. Another series that has covers like these are the Heist Society books by Ally Carter.

3. Epic Symbols

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Epic symbols to me carry the implication that this is going to be an epic book, and also makes me want to read it and see what the symbol represents. The symbol on the cover of Divergent is so cool because it’s also on fire. Fire on covers is awesome. I like this trend so much actually, that I asked my sister to design a cover for my Camp NaNoWriMo novel that had its own epic symbol.

4. Dark Background with One Main Colour

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I think what draws me to these covers the most is the simplicity. I have to say, busy covers do not attract me as much as the simple ones do. They have a tendency to make my eyes tired with trying to look at everything at once. I love how the colours stand out against the dark so well and make these covers eye-catching with that sudden splash of brightness.

 5. Covers with Objects as the Focus

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Like with the epic symbols, I have a soft spot for covers that focus on objects. I generally expect the object to mean something to the story, so having an object on the cover is like getting a tiny taste of the book. Not to mention the fact that you can then have some beautiful and elaborately decorated things gracing the front of your book.

Five Cover Trends I Don't Like So Much

1. Covers Underwater

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I’m going to start this by saying that I’m not against all covers that are set underwater. In fact, I quite like a few of them. But there are such a lot of them now that they’re all starting to look the same to me. The ones that really bother me though, are the covers that are underwater when nothing actually happens underwater. Like the cover for Captivate. True, there were people living underwater, but they were in air, not water, and the underwater kissing never happened. They tricked us precious!

2. The Title Covers the Picture 

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I love this cover. I love the picture and the colours and composition. But the words cover the picture! I can’t see it properly. Honestly, I can’t see the point of having such an amazing, eye-catching cover picture and then covering it up with the title. This is probably a petty quibble, considering the example I posted, but I do love pretty pictures.

3. Unreadable Titles

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Have you ever been browsing titles in the library and had to reread a title to see what it actually says? I love titles in fancy fonts, I really do. I love all the flourishes and the curls. But some fonts make letters look like other letters, while others seem to make letters vanish completely. It’s so frustrating trying to work out what a book is actually called. (Pretty Little Liars isn’t the best example of bad fonts, but I couldn’t remember the titles of the books that annoy me most.)

  

4. Broken Titles

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If there’s one thing I dislike more than unreadable fonts, it would be titles that are split over the entire cover. The title of this book is a single word, but it’s been split into three lines. I find that very difficult to read indeed. The only thing worse than this is a cover with two words broken over several lines so I have to work out which letters goes to which word. It’s frustrating to say the least.

5. Shirtless Men

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This is one cover trend that really annoys me. Why do we need a shot of the man’s bare chest? Is it that important? It’s worse when, like on this cover, the focus is on the man’s chest, and not on his face. Is a bare chest truly that fascinating that it has to be the focus of the cover? I am truly baffled by this trend.

What cover trends do you like? What annoys you? Agree with me on any of these? Can you guess which of these books I've actually read?