Terrible Covers for Great Books

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nirvana In Karma
  • Start date Start date
bendk said:
I'm sure these mean something...
Or maybe they don't mean anything and that is the whole point!


https://www.grafik.net/category/covershot/wild-card
Click to expand...
These covers still look too much like an art class's projects. I like this blurry one though.

large_9a0c2590-862d-43f0-88f4-49425c2d0630.jpg
 
bendk said:
I'm sure these mean something...
Or maybe they don't mean anything and that is the whole point!


https://www.grafik.net/category/covershot/wild-card
Click to expand...

Between these and the Conspiracy cover, I'm starting to think Penguin must have a 2nd grade Arts&Crafts class chained up in a back room somewhere, turning these things out.

Gee, if you look at that The Castle cover from a slight lateral angle, the KAFKA lettering almost seems to spell HELPUS.

Somebody oughta do something.
 
The Faber & Faber covers for Robert Aickman's collections are pretty hokey. Sorry I'm not posting a pic, I'm too lazy. But they generic and remind me of something you'd find in an elementary school library. Fantastic stories though!
 
9781512274936.jpg



Eh, for a collection of horror stories, that actually wouldn't be too bad a cover. Not a very good one either, I grant you, but certainly a long, long way from the worst I've seen, especially within the eldritch netherworld of self-published obscurities.

And at the very least, it's a cover that can hardly be accused of false advertising. Once you see it it's immediately clear who and what this book is going to be about. No clever, artful obfuscation, no tricksy indirection, no vague symbolism. Here is a book, it says, that is exactly what it claims to be; or, as our British chums across the way are known to say, "It does as it says on the tin."

So which one is Steve, anyway?
 
GirlyGirlMask said:
The Faber & Faber covers for Robert Aickman's collections are pretty hokey. Sorry I'm not posting a pic, I'm too lazy. But they generic and remind me of something you'd find in an elementary school library. Fantastic stories though!
Click to expand...

I have most of those editions.... it was either that or getting them for , ugh, Kindle.

A good portion of the covers in the Gollancz Science Fiction Masterworks series can comfortably find a place in this thread. That phrase, Don't judge a book by its cover, was minted with the Gollancz SFMWs in mind.
 
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