What Makes For An Appealing Book Cover?

Obviously, there is no true, definitive answer for the title question. It’s the sort of question that has as many answers as there are people.

 

Likes

Personally, I like a few different styles. I love minimalistic covers, elegantly stylish covers (with an oldy worldy type feel to them), covers that predominantly feature no more than two colours (black and white, black and red etc …) and, for the most part, that’s what makes me look at a book and think ‘cracking cover’. There are some exceptions that are so different that I wasn’t even aware I had an interest in them. But they are few and far between.

That’s not to say a good cover equals a good book, however. I own several books where a bad story is hiding before beautiful artwork.

An example of some of my favourite covers:

The Twisted Ones:

I love the simplistic use of the colour red against the varying shades of black and white. To me, where a good horror cover is concerned, less is more. And this one is the kind of cover that just sticks in my mind. Massively impressed with this one and, when the time comes to get cover art for my own work, I’ll certainly be asking for a quote from this artist.

 

Shallow Waters:

The cover for Crystal Lake’s flash fiction anthology ‘Shallow Waters’ volume 1 just leaps off the screen at me and, when thinking about good artwork, I often find my mind going back to this. Every aspect of the image is crafted to form either the shape of the skull or the space around it and it just looks stunning. It’s one of those that I mentioned that is not my usual thing but I didn’t know I loved that style until I saw it. Absolutely gorgeous.

 

Soon:

This is another great example of black and white being utilized in all of its glory. The cover features aspects from the novel itself so its not just art for arts sake, it actually has relevance to the story beneath its cover. Something a lot of covers don’t do nowadays.

 

The Blade Itself:

Most of Abercrombie’s titles use this simple, yet eye-catching cover art design and I can’t help but love the covers of his books a little more every time I see them. They just look effortlessly elegant and they appeal to the ‘simplistic cover’ lover in me.

 

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle:

This is probably the most simplistic example of simplicity you’ll find. It’s elegant and intriguing and has remained a favourite of mine ever since I laid eyes on it. Its about as minimalistic as you can get and, despite that, it just looks like it has so much going for it. The only bad thing about this cover is that the title has been butchered for the American market.

 

It:

As you can probably tell, these minimalistic, predominantly two-colour based covers are very big favourites of mine. This is about as perfect a cover as I could ever hope to see as far as the wow factor, the relation to the content in the novel and just the visual beauty of it.

 

What makes a good cover for you? What aspects of cover art make you look at it in a way that’s likely to make you part with your money in order to own that book?