The Anatomy of a Book Cover: How Design Expresses Story and Genre
Sometimes, I stand in the book store and just gaze at all the gorgeous covers (until my husband pulls me away, because I’d probably stay there for hours otherwise). You can see the fingerprints of a meticulous designer and artist on each unique spread, and you can get a sense of what’s inside just by looking at the front.
Book covers follow trends according to their genre and age category. This can be frustrating if you are an author or artist who wants to try something new for a novel’s cover, but there are advantages, too. The purpose of a book cover is to attract readers, and calling out to an ideal audience is exactly what will sell copies.
Fitting the Genre
Cover design does a lot of heavy lifting. Not only should it clearly demonstrate the book’s genre, but the subgenre as well. The title, the typefaces, the colours, any other text on the front, and the imagery all say something about the story. The design might even hint at themes, topics, or characters within the pages.
For example, take a look at the fantasy covers below. Based on the art style and the castle’s architecture, I can guess that Eliza Chan’s Fathomfolk is a high fantasy story steeped in Asian folklore. The typeface straddles the line between modern and traditional, with the capitalized letters reminding me of the sweeping brush strokes in Chinese calligraphy. Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors says fabulism or magical realism to me; its focus on objects instead of a scene or a character and the choice of blue, which is a calming colour, contributes to that feeling. Jenn Lyons’ The Sky on Fire screams epic fantasy, because dragons! Both the title itself and the bright red suggests conflict, adventure, and drama.
There are no precise guidelines for what a cover “has” to look like to fit a genre; whenever you speak in absolutes, some artist is going to come in and break those rules in a fabulous way. But there are trends that can be followed or subverted.
For example, typefaces on fantasy covers are often serifs (the letters have little swishes on the ends), because serif fonts predate sans serif fonts, and fantasy is often associated with ancient times and oldness (old magic, old gods, old dragons, etc.). Typefaces on sci-fi covers are often sans serif (blocky text without the swishes), because those fonts feel modern or futuristic.
But honestly, designers challenge those trends all the time. Below are a fantasy novel with a sans serif typeface, a sci-fi novel with a serif typeface, and a sci-fi novel with a sans serif title and serif author name. The choice really depends on what fits the subgenre, mood, and content of the novel. S.A. Maclean’s The Phoenix Keeper is set in a fantasy world that feels more contemporary, so the sans serif typeface, which contrasts with the illustrations of mythical phoenixes, fits. Yume Kitasei’s The Stardust Grail is a sweeping epic about ancient civilizations and artifacts, so the serif typeface, with its sense of oldness, suits the story. Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Lost Ark Dreaming uses both types to create contrast and is thematically fitting, since the story mixes sci-fi with West African mythology.
Young Adult vs. Middle Grade
As you can see from the above examples, adult book covers have a wide range of art and design styles. YA and middle grade covers have trends that are a bit more noticeable and specific.
YA covers (at least, in sci-fi and fantasy) tend to focus on a single character or symbol, which reflects how common first-person narration is within the age category. Colour and saturation choices mirror the tone of the story.
The darker tones of Dinesh Thiru’s Into the Sunken City suggest exploration, danger, mystery, and survival. In contrast, the bright pinks and blues in Bethany Baptiste’s The Poisons We Drink are fitting for a book about poisons, which are often associated with bright-coloured frogs and snakes, and the colours also represent the bisexual flag and the bisexual protagonist; the brightness and the character’s stance are defiant, which is also a theme in this novel.
The moth on Kristen Ciccarelli’s Heartless Hunter doesn’t give as much information about the story as the other two covers do, but you might pick it up and read the back cover copy because it is so vibrant and eye-catching. The tagline, “Her deadliest enemy or her greatest love?”, does a lot of heavy lifting as to what kind of story this is (enemies-to-lovers romantasy)—a reminder that a book cover is about all the elements included on the front, not just the artwork.
Middle grade covers tend to be illustrated in bright, cartoonish styles. You’ll see a lot of saturated, complementary colour palettes. These styles give the covers a milder vibe, even when the subject matter is dark or scary.
The drippy font in Amalie Howard's Bumps in the Night, which would feel too juvenile for an adult horror novel, works perfectly for middle grade horror. Though the art features spiders, monsters, and a dark forest, its cartoon style welcomes young readers. While Bumps in the Night uses two complementary colours (orange and blue) to focus the gaze to the center, Ben Guterson's The World-Famous Nine uses contrasting purple and orange across the whole cover for a magical effect. Kekla Magoon's The Secret Library uses a more muted colour palette, which works well for a mystery about discovering family secrets.
U.S. vs. U.K.
Sometimes, books receive two different covers: one for U.S. distribution and one for the U.K. distribution. Certain types of covers sell better in one country than the other.
Some general trends I’ve noticed: U.S. covers tend to be more literal, featuring more faces and full-bodied characters, while U.K. covers are often more symbolic, featuring typography with surrounding imagery, icons, and scenes. The colours used in U.S. covers are often more vibrant, saturated, or dark, while U.K. covers are often more subdued, pastel, or light. But, as always, it depends on the specific cover.
The U.S. version for John Wiswell’s cozy romance horror, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, is flashier and more vibrant than the U.K. version. It's hard to believe these are for the same book, because the U.S. version focuses more on the horror side of the story, while the U.K. version focuses more on the cozy romance.
The U.S. version of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model features a robot silhouetted against a green sky and futuristic typography, while the U.K. version has a robotic hand lifting up a teacup—how much more British can you get?
All the Elements Coming Together
“Cover design isn’t simply a visual interpretation of the text—as if that’s not hard enough—but must respond to a chorus of voices telling it how to be,” writes Debbie Berne in The Design of Books. “The marketing manager wants to add a blurb, the editor decides a longer subtitle is necessary, the author insists that their sister’s watercolor is the perfect image, and the publisher wants it to resemble the bestselling books in the category.”
Whether you’re the author, editor, marketing manager, publisher, designer, or artist, you are part of a team involved in the cover creation. If you are an indie author, that team is a lot smaller (probably just you and the designer), and more of the decisions fall on you. Whatever the case, it’s easy to become hyper-focused on one area of the design, but a great cover accomplishes more than one thing: it looks good, it represents the genre and subgenre, it says something about the story, and it inspires its intended reader to pick it up. It’s amazing how one image can do all that, but that is the beauty of cover design!
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