We went to the bookstore this weekend and I felt a bit disappointed looking down the fiction rows because all of the cover art seemed so similar between the books.
I used to love having my curiosity piqued by an interesting design but this felt like wandering the generic beige decor in Target.
Has anyone else noticed a shift toward generic imagery on covers that don’t really give a hint to the contents?
by Granny_Faye
8 Comments
I think it is trending that way as there is no high demand otherwise. If it sells *reasonably* well with a ‘bland’ cover, the publisher has no pressing need to make it particularly appealing *visually* – which costs more from designing to printing.
That being said, I too shelf-shop sometimes and let a striking or interesting cover act as serendipity. (I’m the same with wines. “A scuba diving bear on the label for this Beaujolais? I’ll give it a shot!”)
The Penguin Classics typically never disappoint though. Unique without breaking the bank like Folio Society.
As someone who works in cover design, I feel this pain strongly, but at the end of the day the purpose of a cover is to sell the book, it’s product design like any other. A lot of covers are generic because the genre fiction market and buyers push things in that direction. It’s difficult to justify super original covers when money is on the line, often a publisher can only get away with it if it’s literary fiction or classics. Genre fiction has a lot more rules.
I often judge books by their cover though, so almost everything I read has a nice cover 😛 [I’ve had some cool ones this year](https://i.imgur.com/yZaL7Sq.jpg) on my read / to read list!
Cover design in many genres, including mainstream fiction, is driven by publisher marketing.
Here is a late 2022 story: [https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/why-so-many-book-covers-look-same-on-the-media](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/why-so-many-book-covers-look-same-on-the-media)
A 2018 story: [https://lithub.com/is-this-the-biggest-book-cover-trend-of-the-year/](https://lithub.com/is-this-the-biggest-book-cover-trend-of-the-year/)
And here is a 2015 story: [https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/flat-book-cover-design-why-do-all-the-summer-novels-have-the-same-look.html](https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/flat-book-cover-design-why-do-all-the-summer-novels-have-the-same-look.html)
You can see from the chosen examples that while the core characteristics change over time, there is consistently a tendency to align to some preferred aesthetic concept.
It is possible that the aesthetic du jour just doesn’t resonate with you. However, it is very appealing to many people, which is why so many books are using it. Yeah, it doesn’t tell you anything about the book, but if we’re being honest, does a cover ever really do that? While “don’t judge a book by its cover” is an aphoristic idiom for all sorts of situations, it also does apply to the literal situation.
Yeah, looking in bookshops does tend to show that which is why I tend to stick with niche genre stuff, for example [Faction Paradox](https://obversebooks.co.uk/product/the-book-of-the-enemy/), the covers of that book range are unique to say the least.
Yes, or the author’s name and the title just in big letters, one color on the other.
The Night Angel trilogy has pretty cringe covers – good read, tho.
Lol I tend to prefer plain covers, it looks so much prettier when it’s not too crowded. Though I also rarely buy books that I don’t already know about, so I don’t have the same issue of the cover not telling you anything about the book.
You must be in the US too, British cover design seems much better. There’s lots of abstract color blobs covers going around lately and also bad stripped down people in places saturated colors images.