I was raised never to judge a book by its cover, which is advice I have ignored in every bookshop I have entered since the age of nine. Terrible book covers make that easy. They arrive fully formed, like a dinner guest who says something regrettable while still in the doorway, and they dare you to keep reading. I have owned several, and I once hid one inside a newspaper on a train. What follows is a small, upsetting library, arranged for your careful and unfair judgment.
Everyone on this cover is smiling at a different photographer.
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Regency England, now with a smartphone and a handbag.
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The hundredth novel, and they spent the budget on a poodle.
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The horse is doing its best to stay professional.
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Conan Doyle couldn't bring himself to tell it. The cover could.
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Being chased by bees and a tortoise, which is the slowest possible danger.
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A sports crossover nobody requested.
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Rendered on a computer that was clearly struggling.
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Bilbo appears to be made of cornflakes.
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Accurate, but did it have to be this accurate?
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Not one piece of chocolate anywhere.
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Painted with total conviction and one brush.
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Beauty is doing a remarkable job of staying calm.
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The second edition lost the dog and all its credibility.
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Reader, she booked a photoshoot.
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Little Women, big shoulder pads energy.
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No notes. Actually, several notes.
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Mr. Darcy would not survive this woman.
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Dressed for a gala. Foraging anyway.
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So good we're showing it twice.
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She found the sheep. Sort of.
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He has never been this excited about watermelon, and never will be again.
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Two of him, and neither is ready to talk about it.
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The subtitle is doing a lot of damage control.
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Only one of them is using the pacifier correctly.
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Reclining like it's waiting for a portrait painter.
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The skull is just visiting.
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Everyone is stopping it, emphatically.
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Marked down to $1.49 and still not a bargain.
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A little flesh, a little breath, a lot of line breaks.
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Terrible book covers
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I am least forgiving of the classics, because those authors are dead and cannot defend themselves. Classic book covers should be the easy job: the novel is famous, the plot is settled, just put a nice painting on it. Instead someone has dressed Jane Eyre like a nightclub promoter standing between fire and water, as if the real drama of the book was her lighting. I once pretended to have read a novel because its cover looked serious, and these would have spared me the lie.
Nonfiction has a different problem, which is photography. Funny book covers in this category share a very particular energy: a real person, a real camera, and creative direction that appears to have been a shrug. A self-help book about forgiving yourself features the author twice, which suggests the forgiveness is still in progress. I respect that commitment to honesty the way I respect a man who wears a tuxedo into the woods to look for mushrooms.
Then there are the covers made at home, with love, and with whatever software came free with the computer. I have enormous affection for these. When you judge a book by its cover here, you are really judging a brave person who looked at a skull floating over a forest path and thought, yes, that one. Nobody talked them out of it. Possibly nobody was in the room.
Here is my theory. A cover is a promise about the kind of time you’re about to have, and terrible ones break that promise so loudly that you can’t look away. The eye expects a painting and receives a bee with a man’s face. The brain files a formal complaint. Then, against all reason, you want to know what’s inside, which is more than most tasteful covers ever manage.
And underneath the laughing there is real fondness for whoever made them. Every one of these had an author who held a finished copy for the first time and felt enormously proud. I have written nothing and designed even less, so my judgment is free and entirely unearned. That has never once stopped me, and I suspect it has never stopped you.
The cover is loud. The book is quiet. The verdict is final.
If you have any judgment left in you, the worst album covers are sitting right next door, and our book memes are waiting for anyone who owns more books than they’ve read. Graphic design fails and vintage ads round out the shelf, all made by people who were very sure of themselves at the time. Take your time. Nobody here is checking whether you finished anything.
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