Top Ten Cover Trends I Love (or Hate)

Posted June 24, 2014 by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction in Top Ten Tuesday / 0 Comments


Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is:

Top Ten Cover Trends I Love (or Hate)
This one was hard for me because, while I absolutely LOVE some covers (and hate others), it’s hard for me to always really quantify why.  Still, when I took a look, I was definitely able to come up with some patterns.  Not sure if these are really trends or not, but this is what I’m going with.  I couldn’t quite come up with ten either.

I LOVE:

Rich Colors

I absolutely LOVE colorful covers – especially when the colors are rich and bold. The covers for the Splintered series are AMAZING to me – I absolutely adore them.  And it’s all about the color!! 

Color is probably one of the most influential factors in whether or not I truly love a cover.   In fact, you’ll find that lots of my favorite covers that fall into other categories below also have vibrant colors!

Tactile Covers

I love it when the cover of a book FEELS interesting.  Obviously, you can’t see this in the pictures, but the sheet music on the cover of Maybe Someday feels like … well … sheet music paper. And the inside cover of Scorched (under the sleeve) is made to feel like dragon scales!!

Fun Typography

Sometimes the typography on a cover is the star of the show!  Both of these books captured my attention with the cool titles (especially The Assassin’s Curse – every time I see this book, I just know I want to read it – just based on the typography alone!).


Stars


I could probably find you twenty covers that I adore that have to do with stars.  LOVE them!


Pretty Dresses

Yep!  I know lots of people hate them (or are sick of them), but I’m kind of a sucker for a pretty dress – as long as it goes with the story!

Fantastical Settings

Just look at these amazingly awesome places!  Don’t you want to go there?  (At least just for a minute!)

I HATE:
(Or at least don’t love)

Minimalism

Maybe this is why it took me so long to get into contemporary books – the covers often just don’t appeal to me.  I am bored by minimalist covers and it takes a lot more for me to want to pick one up.  A cover with just a title?  Ho hum.  


Symbols

This is really an extension of the last point.  I just don’t get drawn in by a plain cover with a symbol on it.  Doesn’t do it for me.  I absolutely loved The Prophecy by Erin Albert, but the cover just doesn’t do it justice.  And I’ve heard amazing things about Outlander, but that cover!  I just haven’t been able to bring myself to read it and I think the cover is half the reason!  LOL!


Cartoons

Illustrated or cartoony covers generally don’t catch my eye unless they’re kids books.  I don’t know why, since some of them are really cute, but I just don’t feel drawn to books with these types of illustrated covers. 


Bad Self-Published Covers

I’m not going to put any pictures here because it just seems mean, but there are some really cheesy covers out there that scream “self-published author who doesn’t have access to a good cover designer!”  I sometimes still give these books a chance, but it is a big strike against the book!

Oh, and one more thing …
I really hate it when the cover doesn’t match the book.  I don’t mind people on my covers, but they’d better match the description of the character in the book, or I’m downright aggravated.  A cover that has seemingly nothing to do with the book?  Hate it!  (Although I heard a funny story recently about how most authors have absolutely no control over their covers and how one author actually had to add a random apple picking scene into her book because her publishers insisted on using a cover with an eighteen year old girl holding apples even though the book was about a much older woman – and there were no apples originally involved.  Craziness!!)

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with me?  Totally disagree?  I want to know!

Related Posts

Tags:

Leave a Reply

(Enter your URL then click here to include a link to one of your blog posts.)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.