Worst Book Cover Ever?

As all booklovers know, you’d have to go a long way to pinpoint the very worst book cover of all time. This has become even more true since self-publishing started to boom and, at the same time, everyone’s nephew got Adobe InDesign.

So there are some truly terrible covers out there. It’s tough to decide which is the very worst. And then? The Korean translation of a western classic gets a cover that pushes it way up the list.

Though the cover for one of the Korean translations of The Diary of Anne Frank would be horrific for any book in any language, there’s something really revolting about this nubile and seductive young woman on the cover of the heartfelt scribblings of the girl who died in a concentration camp after writing her innermost thoughts and dreams in her diary while living in an Amsterdam attic during the period her family was being hunted by the Nazis. 

As Kotaku, who shared the photo, points out:

Usually, covers of The Diary of Anne Frank feature black and white photos of its author, Anne Frank. Or, you might see tasteful illustrations. You don’t usually see photos like this! 

So while this is probably not the worst book cover ever, between the inappropriate illustration and the typo in the English portion of the typography (we can’t proofread the Korean, so we’ll just have to assume it’s okay) we have to vote this one up pretty high. (Or low, as the case may be.)