• more about #bookcovers
    Damn!!: Looks like the Vapid adolescent rubbish i see people who should know better reading on my commute, would never pick it up in a bookshop.. There's v... more »
    SJ_Edwards: I can't get over the colossal level of fail exhibited at all levels in book marketing. Not just the day to day, yeuch-factor decisions, like these, bu... more »
    klhra006: This cover design has more to do with pandering to pop culture than anything else. There is currently a craze for fruity-looking hairless chested vamp... more »
    kurzon: Swings and roundabouts I guess - they might pick up more romance readers, but won't they miss the sf/fantasy readers, who won't even take the book off... more »
    joshstamell: A lot of covers are looking more sophisticated in their reprint editions. Two good examples are the reprints of the Alec Effinger books-- now they lo... more »
    shadownode: I'm frightened yet compelled to click on the mantitty tag. more »
    MargaretMoony: What I want to know, is why there's been a bunch of books with white backgrounds and insanely bright back lighting? It makes it look like the every b... more »
    TheFu: With that cover art and "Borderlands" in the title, I assumed is was a gay romance. Not that there's anything wrong with that. more »
    Srynerson: Five years ago, rival space pirate captains Val Blue and Dake Sureblood.... Now that's not nice, Charlie! Post the real backcover text with the real... more »
    Inkymonkey: I dunno, I have picked up books with such fiercely accessorized, sexy space heroines with such generous cleavage prancing across the pages that I have... more »
    robinrising: A check of Amazon shows that her previous SF romances have more traditional covers. As this looks like the third book in a series, it seems that mayb... more »
    dangrgirl: Kudos to you Charlie Jane for covering SFR and the Galaxy Express. more »
    Alessar: Yeah just looks like a generic romance book to me. Now for a second I thought it might be m/m pirates in space... but no. more »
    Dr Emilio Lizardo: As an SF fan, I don't really want this identified as SF. I will contiune to look down my nose at any novel qwith a character named "Dake Sureblood." ... more »
    OW-Holmes:Bringer of Fear: I personally wont read a book that doesn't have a space marine, a dragon being killed with a giant axe, a sexy lady elf, or a space cowboy on the cover. more »
    Zidel333: Crappy speculative fiction covers are noting new -- *ahem* Wheel of Time's Lord of Chaos has been described as patriarchy personified -- it's just wh... more »
    Hope Pinkerton: I totally go for space pirates but there's no way I would pick that cover up to read what back cover said. more »
    bililoquy: Not my cup of tea, but Sherrilyn Kenyon's space-romance covers seem to strike a good balance. They're obviously romance, what with the art style and t... more »
    goldfarb: this is the same issue as the variant Harry Potter covers...there are covers for the kiddies and covers for teens and covers for adults.... packaging ... more »
    A Man. A Plan. A Nalpanama.: The most famous example of this: more »
  • #bookcovers

    Book Covers That Are Ashamed To Be Science Fiction

    Check out this new cover for Sureblood by Susan Grant... You'd never know it's a swashbuckling adventure about space pirates. As the genre of science-fiction romance explodes, publishers are trying to hide the fact that these books are science fiction. More »
  • #coverart

    A Vampire Love Story On The Moon, And Our New Favorite Book Cover

    Move over, Diamond Star! There's a new contender for most cheesetastic book cover of the 2000s. It's the cover art for futuristic vampire romance Those Of My Blood. In the full high-res version, you can see the lunar explorer's fangs. More »
  • #giantheads

    Scariest Giant Heads From Science Fiction Book Covers

    Nothing is more terrifying, more mentally scarring, than the giant-head book cover. They loom off the cardstock, their huge eyes bugging out. Nothing inside the pages could be this horrifying. Here are our favorite massive-headed book covers of all time. More »
  • #holycrapwtf

    Cheesiest And Most Inappropriate Book Covers Of All Time

    Most of us would have no problem being seen in public reading a science-fiction novel... unless it had a cover so hideous, or so wrong, that you might get arrested. Here are the cheesiest and most disturbing science-fiction book covers. More »
  • #coverart

    A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers

    A single book can inspire a wide range of covers, and sometimes those covers can be works of art themselves. We look at some classic science fiction novels and the various covers they've worn throughout the years. More »
  • #conceptart

    When Science Fiction Was Psychedelic

    Emanuel Schongut has illustrated book covers for a ton of science fiction, fantasy, and crime classics. This small collection of his 1960s covers perfectly captures the weird, hallucinatory feel of SF from that era. More »
  • #chartporn

    Is This The Year Urban Fantasy Conquers Science Fiction?

    Urban fantasy is swallowing up speculative fiction book sales, according to a new sales chart from Tim Holman, our new favorite chart pornographer. The Orbit Books publisher says that urban fantasy now claims nearly half the SF/F bestselller list. More »
  • #chartporn

    Proof That Every Fantasy Book Cover Must Contain a Sword

    The nerds over at Orbit Books have examined every single fantasy book cover from the past year they could get their hands on, and tallied up the most popular visual elements. Shockingly, unicorns are extremely unpopular in fantasy cover art. More »
  • #bookcovers

    Vampire Laser Love On Mars: The Can't-Fail Ingredients To Create The Best Worst SF Book

    This tag cloud, depicting all the words that go into the worst science-fiction book titles, is a thing of absolute beauty. Orbit Books created it out of the 350 submissions for its "worst cover ever" drive. And the finalists are... More »
  • #bookcovers

    Can You Come Up With A Science Fiction Book Cover Worse Than These?

    Orbit Books is trying to create the worst science fiction book cover of all time — but they're up against stiff competition. Details, and a gallery of some of our fave bad covers, are below. More »
  • #books

    Revenge Of Bad Book Covers!

    Reader Mike Felkins sent us an image of the actual Slow Train To Arcturus cover, including the alleged helmet-condom. On the right, the sanitized/misspelled online version. Meanwhile, another site boasts a wealth of bad covers. More »
  • #books

    Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into A Universe Of Terrible Book Covers

    The "Judge A Book By Its Cover" blog has so much to teach us about science fiction. Like the condom-headed cover that got sanitized online... only to misspell the word "Arcturus." More »
  • #scifiart

    Pulp SF Book Covers That Channel Pure Id

    The greatest pulp science fiction book covers aren't just trashy, they're lurid: filled with half-naked squirming and misplaced eyes, with Prince's man/woman glyph bursting out. Here's a gallery of some of our demented favorites. More »
  • #books

    Gorgeous Reissues of Four Books that Changed the Way We See

    Four design books released in the 1960s and 70s completely changed the way people saw our media-saturated world. Penguin's rebooted them for a new generation, and they're just as relevant as ever. More »
  • #art

    Sexy Adventure Pulps That Leap Off the Page

    Nothing like an adventure tale of sea monsters and lust to make you feel like the action is leaping off the page and straight into your credulous brain. Photographer Thomas Allen knows that too. He creates these images by carefully cutting book covers apart, posing them, then shooting the results to create a strange, dreamy 3D quality. We've got more of his bookish creations below. More »