Op Ed: Just Stop With The Ugly Ass Book Covers

There were a lot of book cover reveals this week both commercial and indie that made me have to address this.

One thing that really grinds my gears that I talk about from time to time is AN UGLY ASS BOOK COVER. An ugly ass book cover is like fucking someone with syphilis. You shouldn’t discriminate for the visible affliction of sores you might find on the top but you do want to keep distance. As the saying goes you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but an ugly ass book cover already makes you question the content of the pages. It boils down to this – if you’re down to your last twenty bucks until payday and you only can buy one book at 19.99 no tax, the ugly ass book cover that looks like digested chitterlings on rye crisp shat out after the dog snatched a plate during Christmas is not going to be in the running.

I understand that if you’re an author that’s over at Penguin Random Schuster you have no say; those tasteless motherfuckers have college educated alphabet woke crusaders over there picking the least offense, gender neutral, sexless shit that think will appease everybody and keep their bowels open better than prune juice and cascara sagrada with a smile. It’s a shame that those motherfuckers can’t just be honest to the book’s content and actually pay people that have a flair for this shit like they used to do to read the book then draw a cover. With AI coming into the fold I’m sure this is going to get worse, especially since these commercial publishers rely on asshole lipstick pillow princess literary experts with trust funds to know what the commoners that still buy books mostly at Walmart like.

Guess what. NOBODY LIKES THEM. This is why I laugh and celebrate every dead author getting their wings when any of the Penguin Random Schuster subsidiaries like HarperCollins bitch and moan about a decrease in book sales like they’re having a period. It happens once a month.

What I don’t get is why there are so many shitty book covers happening in the indie scene.  What the fuck, indie authors and publishers. If you don’t have enough money to fucking pay a graphic designer to make a book cover not look like the ultimate arts and crafts project from hell you should stop fucking publishing. Yeah I said it. Stop publishing. Indies have to be twice as good to get half the attention of the hack asses at Penguin Random Schuster. There is no excuse to have something out there that looks like what a bear leaves behind shitting in the woods.

First off, what’s with this feng shui bullshit happening in the more intense genres like Mystery, Thriller, and Crime?  I’ve seen it across the board especially amongst the feminist, black, latino writers scratching for a seat at the table of the middle ground between being known and unknown. There’s either a portrait picture in tint color or a landscape of something over the horizon, with the ugliest two toned wired lettering with a basic gradient covering it. All of these covers emulating Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl look like a prayer warrior’s church flyer for a date night that a criminal mystery novel.

Then there are covers that look like experimental “ambiance” paintings of the American landscape in a black top wasteland with either animals, vehicles, and mountains off in the distance done by finger paint interpretation of preschoolers learning their colors by using clip art as a guide sheet. The quasi script writing for the title text and author name that I assume is supposed to be a finger brush effect looks more like doing calligraphy with a dirty mop. This shit has been going on now since I feel like I’m watching a very bad fucked up Hallmark Holiday greeting card documentary on the practice years. As Susan Powder used to vivaciously say, stop the motherfucking insanity!  Dropping a towel in mud and having Forest Gump wipe his face and magically create the Joe Boxer smiley face only happens in the movies. Drop your book in mud to get a textured look and its going to come out looking just like it looks, like shit.

Hell, the more simplistic covers that are a solid color featuring only text on it without pictures is equally as fucked up.  Seriously. There are 1,295,384,291,039 fucking fonts on the planet – how is it book cover after book cover keeps picking THE WORST OF THEM? It took me six months to pick the old school font that I wanted for my novel Ghosts On The Block Never Sleep. It took my cover artist half a year to sketch and paint it before redoing it for a digital version. It wasn’t cheap either trying to get that vintage style. At least it looked good, not like most of this crap out here now that has me scared AI is going to produce more of this shit and give people a vision of garbage they actually applaud as greatness.

Save a book. Do a great cover.