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There’s military romance, and then there’s Photoshop Boot Camp: Weekend Edition. The Officer walks straight out of the ranks and into the hall of cover design dishonor, where lighting logic is MIA, proportions are on leave, and subtlety was court-martialed before the...
Some book covers whisper. Some scream. And then there’s Step Away, which speaks in the deadpan monotone of a corporate wellness seminar hosted in a hotel ballroom with stale coffee and folding chairs. This isn’t just a bad cover — it’s the graphic design equivalent of...
If your local elementary school art wall ever had a nervous breakdown and decided to publish a memoir, Raising Multicultural Kids: Roots, Wings and all the Things would be its crowning achievement. This isn’t just a book cover — it’s a coloring book escapee that took...
There’s dystopia, and then there’s design-topia — a bleak, joyless wasteland where graphic choices go to die. Welcome to Universe 25, a book cover that seems less “psychological sci-fi” and more “PowerPoint presentation for 10th grade sociology.” At first glance,...
Sometimes a cover whispers its genre. Sometimes it seduces you with subtlety.And sometimes it kicks down the door of your Kindle screaming “SECRET TWINS, MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE, MAFIA ROMANCE” in all-caps while shirtlessly brooding into the void. Welcome to Double...
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover — but if Forging of A Knight were a knight, this cover would be the dented helmet it never took off again. This digital disaster kicks open the castle gates with a sword so aggressively central it could double as a...
If you were expecting opulence, decadence, or even a house, then The House of Gold is here to teach you a valuable lesson in betrayal by book cover. This is not so much a “house of gold” as it is a “rental unit on the moon.” And the décor? Brutalist grayscale with a...
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a historical romance, a PowerPoint slide, and a scrapbook exploded into the same JPEG, feast your eyes on The Adventures of Good Eagle and Miss Starling — a cover so mismatched, it’s practically a genre mashup in...
Sophistication. It’s a word that evokes poise, restraint, grace. You expect elegance. You expect finesse. You expect... well, something other than this cover, which looks like someone rage-typed in Microsoft Publisher after Googling “free classy painting” and calling...
Hope is swelling. Fury is rising. And the only thing more powerful than both is the sheer visual confusion radiating from this cover like a static-charged anime fever dream. Let’s talk about Jeremy Carter: The Swell of Hope and Fury, a title that sounds like it’s...
Some covers whisper “holiday warmth.” Others shout “Photoshop internship gone wrong.” Christmas Comes to the Greers firmly belongs to the latter category — a wintry explosion of glowing fonts, disconnected lighting, and a photobombing Border Collie that looks like...
Urban fantasy covers are notorious for their leather-clad protagonists, glowing weaponry, and large, mysterious animals that loom without explanation. But Magic Bites takes this formula, drags it through a fog machine, forgets to attach anyone’s feet, and then...
A Note to Authors Featured Here
The purpose of Horrible Covers is not only to critique but also to highlight how much cover design matters to a book’s success. Many authors set out with the best intentions but end up with covers that don’t reflect the quality of their writing — sometimes because they tried to do it themselves, sometimes because they relied on someone who wasn’t a professional cover designer.
We understand how frustrating that can be.
Our aim is simple: to help writers put their best work forward with cover art that does justice to the story inside. If you’ve been featured here and are ready to level up your presentation, reach out through our contact form and mention “Horrible Covers Author.”