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If book covers are supposed to seduce you, Horny: Sex Without Scruples is the equivalent of someone shouting “HEY BABY!” across a parking lot while wearing sweatpants. Let’s start with the title treatment. A giant, blocky, all-caps HORNY in firetruck red dominates the...
Welcome to the Market of the Never Setting Sun, where the bargains are hot, the sun never clocks out, and the design choices are about as coherent as a medieval flea market after last call. Front and center we’ve got our heroic duo, except they don’t so much stand in...
Prompt Buddy promises to be “your friendly companion to learning ChatGPT.” What it delivers on the cover, however, looks less like a helpful guide and more like the result of asking a malfunctioning AI to “design me something… anything.” The background sets the tone...
Nothing says futuristic noir quite like a trench coat, a fedora, and enough neon glow to power Times Square for a week. Unity Storm is clearly aiming for Blade Runner chic, but lands squarely in Sci-Fi Mystery Mad Libs, where every design trope is cranked up to...
Some covers whisper bad design choices. Others scream them from the rooftops like a tabloid headline dipped in essential oils and red flags. Breast Cancer Is a Misdiagnosis does the latter—and then lights the rooftop on fire for dramatic effect. From the moment you...
The Darker Days wants to plunge you into a world of mystery, shadows, and high-stakes drama—but instead, it plunges you straight into a design black hole where perspective dies, moons expand without warning, and spell-check is but a myth. Let’s start with the lunar...
What the Cowboy Wants is apparently a fully airbrushed emotional standoff by a lake, featuring two people who look like they’ve never met but were digitally glued together for the sake of yee-haw drama. This isn’t romantic tension—it’s Photoshop tension. Let’s start...
Scandalous Rescue sounds like the title of a dramatic, high-stakes thriller involving secret agents, stolen art, or at the very least a wildly inappropriate church scandal. Instead, what we get is a cover that looks like a Pinterest mood board got trapped in Microsoft...
Somewhere between a TED Talk slide and the opening screen of a meditation app, Finding Wellness found its way into the Horrible Covers Hall of Stock Art Shame. This cover is a spiritual journey, yes—but not to enlightenment. No, this one leads straight into a glowing...
Welcome to Bucket List Travel Getaways Africa!, where every word is a headline, every font is screaming, and subtlety got left behind somewhere in the Sahara. This cover isn’t just a design—it’s a visually overloaded safari emergency. There are more typefaces here...
Ah, Stage Empire — where one microphone stands alone, dramatically spotlighted like it's about to deliver a soliloquy on how it was Photoshopped into this nightmare against its will. Let’s start with that title font, shall we? It’s giving "Julius Caesar Live at...
Nothing screams “thought leadership” like slapping the biggest font size you can find onto a cover and calling it innovation. Xecutive 2.0 doesn’t just whisper futurism — it shouts like a malfunctioning fax machine. That gigantic “2.0” in blaring red is less “next-gen...
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.”