Cover Art

Cover art has been a hot topic off and on my favorite writer's forum (AQ Connect) for a while now.  As a writer and an artist I have a particular interest in cover art trends.  My art has never appeared on any covers, but I know a few artist whose work has.  Personally, I love to browse the shelves at the bookstore and look at the cover art.  When something catches my eye, I pick up the book and read the cover blurb to see if it's something I would like to buy.  I think most of us are the same way.  In fact, I  started reading my favorite book series because I loved the cover art.  I fell in love with the story with that first book and now it's a highly rated television series.  Since the series aired, the books are being re-released with new covers featuring the stars of the show.  I hate to say it, but the new covers just don't have the same appeal for me as the original cover art.  The photographic covers are beautifully done but have a plain, black background that simply doesn't attract my eye.  If the original covers had been like that, I doubt I would have noticed them on the shelf at all.  If I had, I don't know that I would have been interested enough to pick up the book and read the blurb.  In either case, I probably wouldn't have bought the entire series.  I realize that black, or white, covers are probably less expensive to produce, but the publishers need to remember that we are visual creatures.  Add a few bright colors to the cover, or at least the title, to draw our attention or the volumes begin to merge into one long, monochromatic blur and we walk away empty handed, as I have done many times.

I love books.  I prefer to buy my books so I can keep them forever and read them over and over again.  I love the look of rows of books in my book cases, their colorful spines turned out waiting for me to pick them up again, or for the first time since I bought them.  Nearly all of them are there because the cover art caught my attention first.  They say you can't judge a book by it's cover and this is true.  I've read some very bad books with great cover art.  But I bought the books, good or bad, because they stood out from the other books on the shelves.  I'm a writer myself and I hope to be published some day.  I just hope I get a great cover.  Maybe they'll let me do my own.