The fantastical cover
I have two things to admit: First, that I read fantasy. And second, that I feel no shame in this. I believe firmly that there is something to be learned from any book, be it good or bad, literary or otherwise; I’ve banished the phrase guilty pleasure from those I use to describe different aspects of my reading habits. For example, while I know that world description is a huge thing for some readers, reading fantasy, more than any other genre, has taught me how much I hate long-winded descriptions, and so I leave this out of my own stories, because I don’t want my readers skimming entire pages.
But while I enjoy some fantasy (yes, certain works are horribly formulaic, and I don’t like that in any type of writing), I despise most fantasy book covers. With few exceptions, they seem to me childish, to play into fantasy archetypes rather than to break them, and to have too many design elements competing for attention. Not to mention I hate having a character’s cover image fighting against the one I develop in my own mind. These complaints, of course, go for any genre of books, but I tend to see these problems most in the fantasy books, where simplicity is almost always discarded in favor of chaos and where the cover seems to be more interested in making the book fit into the fantasy genre rather than making it stand out.
One series I read, the Wheel of Time, is currently redoing its covers as the books are released electronically. On the whole, I tend to think the redesigns are much better, because they do seem to want to break out rather than to fit in. The original covers often put upwards of three characters on the covers and depict scenes that mean little (if not nothing) to those that are not familiar with the series already. Here’s one side-by-side comparison.
The original Path of Daggers cover has too many people, shows a scene that means little, and has textual elements that just don't fit in.
The new Path of Daggers cover is cleaner, the colors work much better together, and while the scene still means little to bookstore browsers, it at least sparks some interest.
Even the new cover contains a few things that annoy me (namely, this isn’t how I envision those characters), and it is still a bit stereotypical to use attractive women to sell all types of products, but it is certainly a cleaner design, and a more appealing one. Rather than showing another generic military scene, as the old cover does (a scene that, even having read the book multiple times, I still can’t associate with the cover), the new cover prompts questions, such as who the women are, what they are doing, and why it is important.
But don’t take my word on all of this. Go browsing yourself sometime and you’ll see an insane number of stereotypical elements built into uninteresting covers. Or, you could just take a look at the annual Chart of Fantasy Art put out by Orbit books, which tracks the numbers for fantasy cover elements by year.
My husband reads The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, and of the fantasy book covers I’ve seen, I’d have to say they’re the least obnoxious. They feature the same figure–Harry Dresden–in various fogs and forests and dew-drenched streets. But part of me does wonder if he puts his main character on the cover so he doesn’t have to put in any work on describing him within the novels.
http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/
It’s interesting that the difference between genre fiction covers and literary fiction covers is so huge. I’m in the process of designing a non-literary book cover, and it’s so much harder. This is mostly because there are certain expectations for a romance or fantasy or science fiction book, and breaking away from those too much might mean being passed over by your target market for being different, while blending in means getting lost. When I did mockups for the book like I would have if it was a literary novel, they were completely different in style, content, composition. But also much easier to do, I felt. Maybe that’s just because of what experience I have, or maybe it’s inherent to the genre. Maybe because there are so many more genre books, it’s too overwhelming to try and create a unique, appealing cover, so people just go with what’s been done before. I imagine that’s got to be the primary reason for why they tend to look the same.
It’s interesting to look at that from a designer’s perspective, because there is a fine line to walk between having the book fit in and stand out. Makes me wonder where those conventions came from in the first place.