The Best Book Cover

Back when my readerly tastes were driven by the limited options at my suburb's small, strip mall-located library, I rarely chose my books by their covers. Most of the library books sported dogeared, aggressively stickered covers anyway, so my appreciation for a cover's import remained stunted.

It wasn't until I arrived at college and received a syllabus that included Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea that a book cover swept me up in a passionate embrace. I had read Wide Sargasso Sea before (an excellent companion to Jane Eyre), but my copy was library-bound and looked like this:

The copy I purchased at the university bookstore looked...different:

The newer cover doesn't say "post-colonial prequel" so much as "hot, sexy movie tie-ins!" And it certainly captured my attention. How did my first reading miss all that under-the-waterfall lovemaking?

While the wet, white-hot muscly embrace bears a mostly fantasy-based relationship to the book, the cover makes a potent play for reader's eyeballs. This is the point of all book covers...although some achieve their aims more thoughtfully and cleverly than others.

But what makes for a thoughtful, clever book cover? One that captures readers with style that is inspired by and germane to the story between the covers? There's a lot to consider—we'll cover some of it in a coming post.