Hi. Hello. I hope you’re keeping safe and well. I’m getting this month’s post out at little earlier than usual (i.e. not the 11th hour), and on a Monday no less, because I’m going to be in NYC the rest of this week for work. Even though this is a little bit of a quick and dirty post, there are still lots of covers for you to peruse and admire. Apologies if I’ve missed anything obvious and/or spectacular. I will try to catch up next month.
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley; design by Katy Homans; photo by Bill Brandt (NYRB Books / April 2026)Famesick by Lean Dunham; design by Teddy Blanks (I think?); photo by Anna Gaskell (Random House / April 2026)
Alex also designed the cover of Jimmy Juliano’s previous book Dead Eleven. I confess I have mixed feelings about the current nostalgia for all things 1980s/90s…
This Here is Love by Princess Joy L. Perry; design by Keith Hayes (W.W. Norton / August 2025)
I was reminded, looking back at the posts from 2018, that someone really should collect Keith’s photos into a book…
Well, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t miss the ceaseless chaos and constant anxiety. It is exhausting.
Anyway… I hope you’re keeping safe and well despite it all. I don’t know where March has gone, but this month’s post is another bumper edition with lots of great covers. I’m happy to have a bit more nonfiction in the mix, and there are lots of covers from indie publishers and even a university press along side the usual suspects. There are also a couple of Canadians if you’re keeping score.
Disposable by Sarah Jones; design by Keith Hayes; photograph by Susan Goldstein (Avid Reader / February 2025)
On Giving Up by Adam Phillips; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2024)
Yes, this is from March 2024, so I am precisely a year late posting it. Either I didn’t see it last year or I couldn’t find the credit at the time. Anyway, Alex posted or re-posted this cover relatively recently and it spoke to me.
I also thought it went quite well with this cover…
The slightly less bonkers, but also fun cover of the US edition (published by Scribner this month) was designed by Math Monahan. I’m also quite partial to the definitely bonkers Polish(?) cover designed by Tomasz Majewski.
Hey, I hope you’re safe and well. This month’s post is a big one so I’m pretty much going to let you get on with it, but before I do, I just wanted to mention that I’ve included a gallery of all this month’s covers as the bottom of the post so you can click through them all. This is in response to a reader email about the size of the covers on screen. I think the gallery looks nice, but I am worried that it’s going to play absolute havoc with the RSS / email so apologies in advance if that’s case. Anyway, enjoy this month’s covers, and let me know what you think.
It is the time of year for lists and I should’ve been done weeks ago, but I am late and already well behind the pack. Apologies for that.
I admire Matt Dorfman‘s ability to whittle his list down to a dozen covers for the New York Times. I imagine it takes him a lot less time for one thing, but I’m sure Matt still agonizes over every cover. It requires a level of discipline and restraint that I do not possess to keep it that tight year after year.
PRINT’s list of best book covers of 2024, compiled by editor-at-large Zachary Petit, is also long. It’s a 100 covers. Last year it was 50.
I’m not trying to throw stones here. We are all seeing more covers than we used to. There are more books for one thing. But they’re not just something we just experience in print in anymore. You don’t have to go into a bookstore or read the newspaper or magazine to see them. They’ve become something we see and share all the time online. Designers are promoting their own work and (slowly) getting more credit for it (although there is a lot more to be done in that area. Publishers — credit your designers!). My monthly round-ups are now one of several you can choose from.
And it is not like my list is short. This year it features work by 48 designers — more than half of them women — and 86 covers (plus a couple of supplementary images).
The consensus seems to be that it was a decent year for covers, and it’s hard to argue with other people’s selections even if I don’t love them all.
It is telling though that 100 of LitHub’s selections were individual picks. There are covers on my list that are not on the anyone else’s despite their length. So while I think we agree there were lots of good covers, I’m less certain we entirely agree on which ones were actually the outstanding ones.
A recent article Spine argued that there is a battle between minimalism and maximalism going on (you can find Spine’s end of year list here by the way). I think that could be true. Different approaches work for different audiences. But I also think it’s messier than that. I get the sense that publishers are less sure of what they want and what sells (certain genres notwithstanding).
It has been a rough year for a lot of publishers, so there is undoubtedly a lot of uncertainty, and no small amount of anxiety. I could go on about why that it is (and the publishing’s self-inflicted wounds) but, in short, what I think we’re also seeing with book covers is more meddling and less direction.
Anyway, I don’t want to end this on a bleak note. This year was shit enough. Despite it all, there genuinely were a lot of good covers in 2024, and some that I did think we’re outstanding. A couple of them made me laugh, which was no small thing. It was a strong year for several individual designers in particular and, despite the pressures, many produced work that was recognizably theirs. I thought there were more interesting covers coming out of the UK and Ireland (that mercifully wasn’t just about the inks or the finishes!), and there were some fun Canadian covers too.
Thanks, as always, for reading, and I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Happy Holidays!
Holy Winter 20/21 by Maria Stepanova; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / October 2024)My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / February 2024)
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar; design by Anna Morrison (And Other Stories / August 2025)
MILF by Paloma Faith; design by Jack Smyth (Ebury / June 2024)
Also designed by Jack Smith:
Lobster by Hollie McNish; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / March 2024)Neu Klang by Christoph Dallach; design by Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2024)
I also have to give a special shout out to the cover for Paper Boat by Margaret Atwood (Chatto & Windus / October 2024). Suzanne commissioned paper art by Nathan Ward to design a template for a paper boat that could be cut out from the dust jacket and stuck together.
Hey everyone. I hope you keeping well. It’s another big post this month. There are lots of new covers, but also quite a few that I missed (or didn’t have the design credit for!) from earlier this year too. I expect that’ll keep happening over the next couple of posts as I try to catch up over the summer, so feel free to send me stuff I might have overlooked. Now is the time!
The cover of the UK edition published by Penguin earlier this year, designed by Richard Bravery (I think?), uses the same painting by Tosin Kalejaye but it’s interesting to see the differences in the approach side by side.
Another example of the US and the UK cover sharing the same image but with differing approaches. I like the type and the retro poster vibe of the UK cover a lot. I don’t have the design credit though so please drop me a note if you know whose work it is and I’ll add it in!
Brat by Gabriel Smith; design by Stephanie Ross (Penguin Press / June 2024)
Cue the Sun by Emily Nussbaum; design by Michael Morris (Random House / June 2024)
I’m a bit late to this. An Excellent Host, a short story by Chelsea G. Summers author of the cult hit A Certain Hunger, was originally printed exclusively for Independent Bookstore Day back in April. Signed copies are still currently available from the publisher. Jaya Nicely also designed the cover of A Certain Hunger of course…
The cover of the US edition of Monstrilio, published by Zando in March last year, was designed by Alex Merto. I was a little late to it, but it was included in my September round-up.
I’m not much of a horror fan so my frame of reference is very dated, but this cover immediately made me thing of the 1998 Japanese movie Ringu (and the end of The Blair Witch Project).
This makes a nice pair with the cover of The Upstairs Delicatessen by Dwight Garner designed by June Park and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October last year.
Hey. I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you are. I’m going to keep this very short as there’s lots going on, but there some great covers, and a couple of tenuous comparisons this month (hey, I can’t help how my brain works!) . Enjoy!
This reminded me of Akiko Stehrenberger‘s poster for the movie Funny Games. They don’t really look alike, and the tone is very different, but I think it was the close crop and the hair that brought it to mind.
Dirtbag by Amber A’Lee Frost; design by Rob Grom (St. Martin’s Press / December 2023)
This brought to mind Peter Mendelsund’s cover for The Woman Destroyedby Simone Beauvoir, published by Pantheon, which in turn reminded me Gunter Rambow‘s Gitanes, Un Hommage à Max Ponty poster…
The image is taken from the 17th Century painting ‘The Torture of Prometheus’ by Giovacchino Assereto (thanks for letting me know, Jason!). The tight crop (which is great!), reminded me of Peter Hujar’s 1969 photograph ‘Orgasmic Man’, which was used on the cover of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara designed by Cardon Webb a few years ago. Art imitating art, kind of?
Jacket design by Cardon Webb; jacket photograph Orgasmic Man by Peter Hujar 1987
Splinters by Leslie Jamison; design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown & Co / February 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of Splinters, published this month by Granta, was designed by Jack Smyth. It’s interesting to see to a torn author photo in both…
Hey. I hope you’re safe and well and caught up on your podcasts, shows, and TBR pile.
I thought this was going to be a short post this month, and then it turned into a long one — or longer than expected at least. I don’t have too much to add to the covers. I’m busy, you’re busy. It’s almost October, literally no one has time for this! But there are some lovely covers this month. There’s a bit autumnal orange and ennui, some nice type, and a couple of Canadian covers (for those keeping count), and a couple of appropriately off-beat ones from our friends at New Directions.*
American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2023)
Fear by Robert Peckham; design by Tom Etherington (Profile / September 2023)
Goth by Lol Tolhurst; design by Timothy O’Donnell (Quercus Publishing / September 2023)
This whole thing is ridiculously in my wheelhouse. The cover photo is by the author (of course!), and there’s a fun note about trying to source the type in Timothy’s Instagram post about the design.
Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
I’m not sure it was the intention, but I like the trippy film title / goth art project quality of this.
The Lights by Ben Lerner; design by David Pearson (Granta / September 2023)
Hopefully you’ve all had chance to listen to David on the Cover Meeting podcast by now. It’s really good!
The cover of the US edition published by FSG was designed by Thom Colligan. It’s interesting that they’re similar and yet different. I wonder if it was brief or just a creative coincidence?
I’m sure I’m not the only one to get Edward Hopper vibes from this cover.
The cover of the UK edition was designed by Suzanne Dean with a cover illustration by Anna Morrison.
*A bit of admin from last month: I finally managed to spend some time browsing a bookstore and I was able to ascertain that the cover of the US edition of Bridge by Lauren Beukes was designed by Kirin Diemont. Apologies to Kirin for not crediting her at the time in last month’s post. It’s updated now)
Sisters by Daisy Johnson; design by Suzanne Dean; photograph Simon Kerola (Jonathan Cape / August 2020)
The cover of the US edition of Sisters, published by Riverhead this month, was designed by Jaya Miceli. The painting is by Jeremy Olson. (Thank you to the folks on Twitter who helped me with this!)
Maybe someone has done this before and I didn’t notice (or, more likely forgotten), but it’s great to see a photograph from the EPA’s remarkable DOCUMERICA Project — available through the US National Archives on Flickr — on a book cover.
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld; design by Jo Thomson (Doubleday / July 2020)
It’s interesting that the US cover of Rodham is essentially the same as the UK one. I would’ve thought for sure that they would take different approaches.
This cover immediately reminded me of Helen Crawford-White’s cover A Half-Baked Ideaby Olivia Potts published last year…
And then I thought maybe it was a nod to the cover of The White Album by Joan Didion, published in 1979 (the reissue below uses the original cover), and which Fonts in Use informs me uses the typeface Pistilli Roman. But maybe I am over thinking it…?
I was also reminded of these two recent covers, so maybe it is just a thing…?
I believe this is only available as an ebook, which seems a bit of shame. It would be nice to see in print. The cover does remind me of something else though. I can’t think what exactly. The best I could come up with was Tyler Comrie‘s cover for The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs. But I feel like there is cover that does something similar with a painting as a background? Possibly I’m just imagining it.
Oh and for those of you who are interested, the design team at Penguin Random House Canada have started posting their work to Instagram as one_last_tweak.
Fracture by André Neuman; design by June Park (Farrar Straus & Giroux / May 2020)
Meh. February. At least it’s almost over (and the book covers are good).
The Bear by Andrew Krivak; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2020)
(I read an ARC of The Bear last year (full disclosure: the folks that pay me distribute Bellevue Literary Press in Canada), and haven’t really stopped talking about it since, so I may as well mention here too. It’s very sincere, and reminiscent of the kind of Cold War science fiction in which war and environmental catastrophe have led to the end of civilization. It is not dystopian though. It reads rather like beautiful melancholy fable. I liked it a lot.)
One for the meta-covers list (and does the use of Lydian on the cover of a book on the cover of book count as ironic?)
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co / February 2020)
The cover of the UK edition published by Picador was designed by Katie Tooke I believe (and if anyone can tell me who the did the illustration — based on traditional Norwegian folk art rosemaling — I would be grateful!)
Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / February 2020)
Whistleblower by Susan Fowler; design by Catherine Casalino (Viking / February 2020)
Nice type.
Weather by Jenny Offill; design by John Gall (Knopf / February 2020)
There haven’t been very many John Gall covers on the blog recently, so it’s a delight to post two in the same month. And this really is a most Gallian of John Gall covers.
The cover of the UK edition of Weather, published by Granta, was designed by Gray318…
