Your Coverage May Vary

One of the things you’ll have noticed if you spend much time either here or at our sister publication, The Rap Sheet, is that we give a lot of thought to book covers. This is especially true over at The Rap Sheet, where editor J. Kingston Pierce has turned the whole matter into something of a fine art.

So it was with some amusement today that I came across this short piece on the Abe Books Web site entitled “30 Novels Worth Buying For the Cover Alone.”

And are they? Well, you decide. Personally, there is no book I would buy simply because I thought the cover was good. (Even though, on the author side of things, I consider myself very lucky because my publisher does a killer job on the covers of my books.)

In fairness, though, some of the books included in Abe Books’ 30 would be worth reading even with stinky covers. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (although I must admit I’ve seen it with covers I like better than the one shown here.)

In any case, if you think it’s fun to see what books others think are well covered, the piece is worth a peek. (And a peek is all you’ll need here: it’s very brief. Not much reading required.)

Still hankering to revel in the art of the book covers? Pay attention to anything J. Kingston Pierce has written on the topic. It’s turned into something of a hobby for him. He even recently developed a blog called Killer Covers (“Because it’s What’s Up Front That Counts”). Also, check out his ongoing -- and engaging -- series on copycat covers. It’s astonishing. As well, for the last couple of years, he’s been rounding up the very best in crime fiction covers and asking readers to vote on same.