See the coveted Flying Monkey Awards presented Daily on YouTube!
And see who wins the Flying Monkey Award!
If you’ve ever wished your bookshelf screamed "scandalous suburban melodrama staged in a Sears dressing room", then Mother, How Could You! is your fever dream come true. Let’s set the scene: A heavily pregnant woman, possibly mid-contraction, is caught in what can...
If Objectivism taught us that man must rise by the sweat of his brow, then this cover proves that someone was definitely sweating — just not over design principles. This two-for-one special edition of Ayn Rand’s ideological doorstoppers looks less like a literary...
When the spirit realm calls, you answer—with a floating torso, flat lighting, and ghost hands straight from the discount bin at Spirit Halloween. Welcome to I Am Haunted, where Zak Bagans, ghost hunter extraordinaire, bravely poses in front of what appears to be a...
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a school counseling pamphlet was illustrated by an unchaperoned classroom on “free drawing day,” look no further than Harpo’s Horrible Secret — a cover that not only crashes the design bus, but backs it up and drives...
Ah yes, nothing says “police drama thriller” quite like... two CGI-glazed horses running through a radioactive forest. The Witness, book two in The Women of Strength, Courage, and Hope series, gallops into our hall of infamy with the grace of a Photoshopped mare...
A Climax In Time sounds like the setup for a historical romance, a sci-fi epic, or possibly a bad pun stretched across the space-time continuum. What we got instead is a cover that looks like it fell through a wormhole made entirely of clip art and poor font...
Ah yes, nothing says "Off Beat Travels in South-East Asia" like a washed-out family vacation photo from your uncle’s Canon PowerShot circa 1999. This cover boldly goes where every travel guide should never go: straight into the family scrapbook. It's giving “Dad just...
Welcome to the barnyard of bafflement, where color theory, photo editing, and basic design principles come to die. Let’s talk about Humorous Stories by Scott W. Clark — a book cover so devoid of intentional design it feels like a rogue printer just got creative during...
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you mix clip-art horror with Florida tourism pamphlets, look no further than Hangry as Hell — a novella that appears to be literally hemorrhaging design choices. Let’s start at the top. The title “Hangry as Hell” gives us a...
You might think nothing could prepare you for the sheer visual chaos of this cover—but nothing could prepare you. Not even Steve Beat himself, soaring through a digital hellscape of design decisions that feel like a group project gone rogue in the last hour before a...
Ah yes, another thrilling entry in the Katie & Maverick Cozy Mysteries, where the mystery isn’t so much whodunnit as it is “who approved this cover?” Let’s start with what hits you immediately: the "design" is essentially a PowerPoint slide that went rogue. The...
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.But sometimes a cover judges itself—and fails spectacularly. At first glance, Reaper: Ghostfall looks like a respectable piece of post-apocalyptic fantasy grit. The lone figure, the glowing scythe, the mysterious dome...
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.”