I tend to mention from time-to-time that covers are important, even if the contents of a novel are all that actually matters in the end.
A creative, satisfying, and refined cover that conveys quality (as well as the tone of the story) is essential to making a book more enticing to shoppers. That’s why I find it very annoying to see so many samey, uninspired, and cheaply produced covers.
Whilst it can happen to any work, there is a larger and more common demographic that lack in cover art quality; works of smaller authors, or works that happen to be printed by less dominant publishers, tend to suffer from what I call Bland Cover Syndrome.
What are the symptoms? Generic fonts; real-world picture; close up of someone’s face; overly detailed or dramatic; doesn’t tell you much about the book itself; a strange obsession with the colours yellow and blue.
Below are some victims of Bland Cover Syndrome (none of which I have read).
I think you can see the traits I’m talking about bleeding through here. Obviously, most of these books are marketed towards a general audience, some of them more so towards females, and some perhaps even towards young adults. Not everyone wants an extravagant cover, but I’ve never really witnessed someone complaining about artistry being ‘too good’ or ‘too creative.’
Compare the above examples to the covers below (again, none of which I have read thus far) and then try to tell me that Bland Cover Syndrome doesn’t influence how you perceive the quality of a work to be.
In my opinion, all of these covers look extremely different from one another. Each has its own theme, art style, and level of detail that conveys the personality embedded within the work. Their layout varies, the location and font of the text differs, and there is a range of tones and colours on offer.
Ultimately, you can make your own mind up about how important and influential covers are to your tastes and choices of novel — as far as I go, they’re rather important to whether or not I will even read the blurb, let alone actually purchasing the novel and sitting down to read it.
If you ever write a novel, don’t let it suffer from Bland Cover Syndrome.
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