Embedded Files
February 20, 2024
What an eyesore. (Photo credit: Penguin Random House; Catapult; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; Macmillan)
If you’ve been inside a Barnes and Noble lately, you might have noticed a disappointing trend. Every book written in the past 5 years looks exactly the same. The majority of romance novel covers feature the same minimalist illustrations, bold colors, and calligraphy font, making each indistinguishable from the next. Or, you might see the all caps bold font over bright geometric background variety of book cover. Although book covers have always gone through style trends, this one seems particularly overdone.
Throughout history, book covers have evolved through different materials and styles. Before 1830, most books had fabric covers with the title printed into the spine, and maybe some small designs. Near the end of the 19th century, publishers began using paper dust jackets, and images could be printed onto book covers. The 1960 featured minimalist designs and small titles, and in the 70s, more vivid graphics dominated fiction book covers. The 80s introduced larger and bolder titles, while the 90s turned to darker color schemes and more abstract art styles.
Today, half of all U.S. book purchases are made on Amazon, many of these on mobile phones. “The first job of a book cover, after gesturing at the content inside, is to look great in miniature,” writes Margot Boyer-Dry in her article Welcome to the Bold and Blocky Instagram Era of Book Covers. Hence, the bright blobs of color and huge blocky letters. “When you look at book covers right now, what you’ll see blaring back at you, bold and dazzling, is a highly competitive marketing landscape dominated by online retail, social media, and their curiously symbiotic rival, the resurgent independent bookstore.”
Awful. Just awful. (Photo credit: Elena Nicolaou)
Book covers from the 60s - 90s
What intrigued me most was the particular style of book cover that today’s romance novels all seem to display. These covers typically feature flat, ambiguous illustrations of the love interests, in bright colors and some variation of a calligraphy font, or worse, the scattered-flowers-and-block-letters covers (yeah, I’m looking at you Colleen Hoover and Lucy Score). As Kelly Jensen of BookRiot puts it, “how many ways can a woman in sunglasses be drawn?”
Unsurprisingly, social media is the primary culprit here. Rachel Ake Keuch of Random House explains, “the current book cover trend is highly influenced by what publishers and sales teams think is ‘Instagram-friendly,’” and these bright and boring illustrations fit the mold perfectly. Kayleigh Donaldson of Paste Magazine writes, “for many readers new to romance, an illustrated couple seems far less intimidating to a first-time reader than a shirtless hunk in a clinch pose with his love interest.” These newer romance novels still deliver the steamy storylines as always, but are more enticing to those who are new to the genre and, even more importantly, promise a less embarrassing public reading experience.
But some argue that these covers are misleading, causing readers to think they’re in for a fun and innocent love story, when what they’re really getting is much more intense. Donaldson says, “there’s a homogeneity that feels unrepresentative of what they’re selling. It’s weird to see a reverse harem erotica have the same cover style as a low-spice rom-com as a paranormal romance.” Writing a book with highly adult content and then slapping a bright, fun, illustrated cover onto it is not only misleading, it’s potentially harmful to younger readers who don’t know what they’re getting into. The purpose of a book cover is to represent the contents of the book, not catfish its readers.
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