Whenever people complain about contemporary book covers, I know for a fact they haven’t looked at the cookbook section, because holy shit have those covers improved over the past 30 years 😅
I mean, pragmatically speaking, a 'good' book cover is a cover that did its job well and that doesn't necessarily equate to it being aesthetically pleasing in someone's subjective opinion. There are plenty of covers out there that are good covers for their genre, designed well, but just not my taste. That doesn't make them bad covers though. It just makes them not my cup of tea. I think a lot of people conflate what they like in cover design and what a cover's purpose is. There are also cover trends which come and go for every genre and, just like with fashion trends, some are better and more pleasing to look at than others.
Such a good point, when I scroll new releases on the library website, I'm looking for things that are designed in a way to convey to me that they're my kind of thing, and other readers are doing the same for their own preferred genre, style, and tone. That signposting is doing important work!
The answer is in the story, "I went online to search for the cover I wanted."
Yeah, exactly. Because you can do that now, not like back when there was only one edition of a book anywhere in your locality and what you saw is what you get.
This has always been a behavior that's grinded my gears, but I do actually need to start figuring out what is going on behind it, but people seem determined to treat a world of post-scarcity as even more scarce than a world of scarcity. It's some sort of paradox of choice thing, or too many communications desperate for attention tiring out brain and soul, or a bad disconnect between lifestyle expectations and high wealth inequality reality, or is just the way the brain works, but people really are determined in thinking they don't have the art that's right in front of them.
I agree with you. I think it's very easy to think that things were better in the past because we decidedly remember, well, the memorable. Of course it looks like cinema used to be all good if you're scrolling through the Criterion app. I do think that some of what's happening here is mistaking taste for quality. As artists I think it's important that we have a strong point of view but I think it's just as important to be able to say "okay, that isn't to my taste but is it still good?"
Anyway, if anyone ever hears me say "there's no good X anymore!" you have my permission to smack the back of my head.
What about this one my friend made for my new book YUCK, about the Joshua Tree, Yucca brevafolia? The book drops next Wednesday. Some really talented well-known people liked the writing. I don't know what they were thinking. I'm just all about the cover. https://dumpsterfires.substack.com/p/book
I am always here for people pushing back against simplistic narratives of "things were good before and now they are bad"! There's always a more interesting story there.
Reading this, I thought about an example which might be interesting to you: Anaïs Nin's books. The old editions of House of Incest (or any other book) of hers and the new ones (and by new ones, I count in those released in the 1990s) are worlds apart. I think they're doing a huge disservice to her—the raunchy covers position her writing in the wrong category, and I could never understand using exclusively black and white covers for her writing, which is so bright and sensual. Some Penguin editions are lovely, but I still prefer the original ones. I keep waiting for someone to rerelease her books in a new beautiful edition, and in the meantime, I'm just looking for old copies everywhere on the internet... They are hard to come by!
Thanks! I enjoy reading your thoughts. In my ideal world, I would love to initiate rereleases as an editorial project and work on them with a designer. I'd be so curious to see how you would design her covers! Maybe one day...
I love that it’s all even being discussed! Since we briefly spoke, I’ve seen several random posts about the quality of book covers, as of late. So it’s something that’s being noticed. The reason the b&n list of book covers was used is because all of those are on their first round of releases. Of course, if a book has been out for 50 years, I’m most likely going to find a decent cover for it. But if you walk into a bookstore and look at the new books, a very large portion of them have rushed, vibrant, and ill conceived covers. Alas, this is my simple and humble opinion and of course, everyone has their own. :)
Thanks for weighing in! I think, to your point, covers are always a going to be a mixed bag. But more importantly I think they always have been. And this is especially true for the bestsellers that are designed to appeal the most broadly. But there’s good stuff—even good new stuff—to be found.
Then again, that’s just my opinion! And I follow a glut of great book designers on Instagram which likely influences my option. And like I said, tastes absolutely vary and I make no claim to be an official arbiter of tastes when it comes to cover design.
I do 95% of my book shopping at thrift stores so I get to see old and new rambled together in a wild hodgepodge of banal and incredible. I’d say that there is no defining good or bad generation for book covers. The terrible and the sublime co-exist in every genre and decade.
The one thing is that like fast fashion, there are now vastly more quick to market series that come into being and when those appear on the shelves divested from someone’s collection, they can dominate with their mass market tactile covers.
But I would say that it is mostly a wonderful time for book covers. Like everything else it comes down to taste.
It’s the “perma-ad copy” for me. I had American Prometheus on my TBR when it came out but never got around to it, and now the cover is trash with the movie banner and pulitzer seal, I don’t even really want to get it now ( https://a.co/d/heumYDw ) Same goes for any book unfortunate to have ever been part of Oprah’s book club 🤮 Thank god I read Hamilton before it became a musical!
For my money, though I'm far from an expert, the NYRB Classics covers are consistently exceptional. I will always prioritise one of their editions, if available.
I've struggled sometimes to get the cover I wanted for a particular book. The Sheltering Sky has gone through so many iterations and it's become harder and harder to find the Penguin cover with the blurry hooded figure. Same goes for Earthly Powers, the cover featuring the crucifix in the priest's hands. And about 20 years ago I saw the cover to Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading featuring a cleaver on a chopping board and I so regret not buying it. Haven't seen it since and I can't even locate it online.
Another quibble - I've tried to order particular versions (on Amazon, maybe that's the problem) of books that were meant to be the cover or edition I wanted, only to get something different in the post.
I almost listed NYRB, but went with McNally Editions, so I’m right there with you!
That’s a good point—sometimes there’s so many covers, it can be hard to get your preferred one! And from what I understand Amazon isn’t particularly great at sending the right cover, especially for public domain titles. They’ll put a bunch of covers under one listing.
I’m constantly seeing beautiful covers in the new fiction section at Barnes and Noble just to open them up and find that it’s the prose that is bland and uninspired.
Whenever people complain about contemporary book covers, I know for a fact they haven’t looked at the cookbook section, because holy shit have those covers improved over the past 30 years 😅
Haha very true!
Arguments in this space are very genre dependent. Which, I think, speaks to my argument that such statements are just too broad to be fair.
I mean, pragmatically speaking, a 'good' book cover is a cover that did its job well and that doesn't necessarily equate to it being aesthetically pleasing in someone's subjective opinion. There are plenty of covers out there that are good covers for their genre, designed well, but just not my taste. That doesn't make them bad covers though. It just makes them not my cup of tea. I think a lot of people conflate what they like in cover design and what a cover's purpose is. There are also cover trends which come and go for every genre and, just like with fashion trends, some are better and more pleasing to look at than others.
Such a good point, when I scroll new releases on the library website, I'm looking for things that are designed in a way to convey to me that they're my kind of thing, and other readers are doing the same for their own preferred genre, style, and tone. That signposting is doing important work!
The answer is in the story, "I went online to search for the cover I wanted."
Yeah, exactly. Because you can do that now, not like back when there was only one edition of a book anywhere in your locality and what you saw is what you get.
This has always been a behavior that's grinded my gears, but I do actually need to start figuring out what is going on behind it, but people seem determined to treat a world of post-scarcity as even more scarce than a world of scarcity. It's some sort of paradox of choice thing, or too many communications desperate for attention tiring out brain and soul, or a bad disconnect between lifestyle expectations and high wealth inequality reality, or is just the way the brain works, but people really are determined in thinking they don't have the art that's right in front of them.
I agree with you. I think it's very easy to think that things were better in the past because we decidedly remember, well, the memorable. Of course it looks like cinema used to be all good if you're scrolling through the Criterion app. I do think that some of what's happening here is mistaking taste for quality. As artists I think it's important that we have a strong point of view but I think it's just as important to be able to say "okay, that isn't to my taste but is it still good?"
Anyway, if anyone ever hears me say "there's no good X anymore!" you have my permission to smack the back of my head.
Well said! I think this is an astute analysis.
What about this one my friend made for my new book YUCK, about the Joshua Tree, Yucca brevafolia? The book drops next Wednesday. Some really talented well-known people liked the writing. I don't know what they were thinking. I'm just all about the cover. https://dumpsterfires.substack.com/p/book
I think that’s pretty great!
Hallelujah 🙏
I'd always rather have a flawed cover that stands out than a polished facsimile.
I am always here for people pushing back against simplistic narratives of "things were good before and now they are bad"! There's always a more interesting story there.
Reading this, I thought about an example which might be interesting to you: Anaïs Nin's books. The old editions of House of Incest (or any other book) of hers and the new ones (and by new ones, I count in those released in the 1990s) are worlds apart. I think they're doing a huge disservice to her—the raunchy covers position her writing in the wrong category, and I could never understand using exclusively black and white covers for her writing, which is so bright and sensual. Some Penguin editions are lovely, but I still prefer the original ones. I keep waiting for someone to rerelease her books in a new beautiful edition, and in the meantime, I'm just looking for old copies everywhere on the internet... They are hard to come by!
Ooooh interesting, thanks for sharing. Great example. There are definitely still misfires today, I won’t argue that!
Here’s hoping the catalog gets a fresh package soon … and that you like it 🙂
Thanks! I enjoy reading your thoughts. In my ideal world, I would love to initiate rereleases as an editorial project and work on them with a designer. I'd be so curious to see how you would design her covers! Maybe one day...
P.S. My favorite contemporary covers come (almost) always from New Directions!
I love that it’s all even being discussed! Since we briefly spoke, I’ve seen several random posts about the quality of book covers, as of late. So it’s something that’s being noticed. The reason the b&n list of book covers was used is because all of those are on their first round of releases. Of course, if a book has been out for 50 years, I’m most likely going to find a decent cover for it. But if you walk into a bookstore and look at the new books, a very large portion of them have rushed, vibrant, and ill conceived covers. Alas, this is my simple and humble opinion and of course, everyone has their own. :)
Thanks for weighing in! I think, to your point, covers are always a going to be a mixed bag. But more importantly I think they always have been. And this is especially true for the bestsellers that are designed to appeal the most broadly. But there’s good stuff—even good new stuff—to be found.
Then again, that’s just my opinion! And I follow a glut of great book designers on Instagram which likely influences my option. And like I said, tastes absolutely vary and I make no claim to be an official arbiter of tastes when it comes to cover design.
Those McNally covers are fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
The books are good too! Thanks for reading.
I do 95% of my book shopping at thrift stores so I get to see old and new rambled together in a wild hodgepodge of banal and incredible. I’d say that there is no defining good or bad generation for book covers. The terrible and the sublime co-exist in every genre and decade.
The one thing is that like fast fashion, there are now vastly more quick to market series that come into being and when those appear on the shelves divested from someone’s collection, they can dominate with their mass market tactile covers.
But I would say that it is mostly a wonderful time for book covers. Like everything else it comes down to taste.
I also do a ton of book shopping at thrift stores. I completely agree with you!
It’s the “perma-ad copy” for me. I had American Prometheus on my TBR when it came out but never got around to it, and now the cover is trash with the movie banner and pulitzer seal, I don’t even really want to get it now ( https://a.co/d/heumYDw ) Same goes for any book unfortunate to have ever been part of Oprah’s book club 🤮 Thank god I read Hamilton before it became a musical!
That’s a fair point!
For my money, though I'm far from an expert, the NYRB Classics covers are consistently exceptional. I will always prioritise one of their editions, if available.
I've struggled sometimes to get the cover I wanted for a particular book. The Sheltering Sky has gone through so many iterations and it's become harder and harder to find the Penguin cover with the blurry hooded figure. Same goes for Earthly Powers, the cover featuring the crucifix in the priest's hands. And about 20 years ago I saw the cover to Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading featuring a cleaver on a chopping board and I so regret not buying it. Haven't seen it since and I can't even locate it online.
Another quibble - I've tried to order particular versions (on Amazon, maybe that's the problem) of books that were meant to be the cover or edition I wanted, only to get something different in the post.
I almost listed NYRB, but went with McNally Editions, so I’m right there with you!
That’s a good point—sometimes there’s so many covers, it can be hard to get your preferred one! And from what I understand Amazon isn’t particularly great at sending the right cover, especially for public domain titles. They’ll put a bunch of covers under one listing.
I don't know McNally very well, but I had a look and wow, they are spectacular. The Graywolf are lovely too.
I’m constantly seeing beautiful covers in the new fiction section at Barnes and Noble just to open them up and find that it’s the prose that is bland and uninspired.