Thesis Thursdays is a weekly(ish) feature where I rant, love and talk about young adult books I’m reading because I’m conning my college into thinking this is all for academia! Find out more here!
After getting out of my thesis meeting today, it turns out that I have too many thoughts about YA book covers. I want to say too much about them, in too many angles, in too many ways. I could write a million papers about YA book covers.
So, while that is not productive to me, I’m going to talk about a few things that came up for me and see if you guys think I’m crazy or if you’ve noticed this too. I’m going to make a serious effort to stay quick and to the point–and not get my professorial lecturing on–so many of these ideas will stay surface level. Tell me what you find interesting!
- Book cover trends in general – like, literally, what is going on with this? Books that
are all different genres–dystopian, fantasy, paranormal, realistic–they all look the same. Each one of them was just as likely to have a “girl in dress” or “half girl face” cover as the next. That doesn’t help you figure out what the book is supposed to be about? Sure, those were some pretty dresses, but do we care? I’d rather see actual content related covers, if you don’t mind. Of particular concern to me:
- Book covers that partition the female body – Why do we need book covers that focus just on female torsos? Why not give them heads or full bodies? Fragmentation of the female body has been long studied in advertising as a way to help objectify it. Which is doubly weird, since most YA books are marketed towards female readers.
Girls in dresses – Okay, on some overs this is fine. Like, for instance, Kiera Cass’s Selection series. That makes sense. But on books where we’re supposed to get a strong female character, why are they shown in inactive poses in dresses that will not be very helpful in a fight? Or, at the very least, they never wear in the actual book?
- Book cover changes mid-series publication – Am I
insane, or did this never used to happen? I never used to have to flip out because I bought one book in hardcover,
The original ToG cover.
but by the time the next book came out, the covers had completely changed. Now, oftentimes this change IS for the better (I’m looking at you, Throne of Glass), but … it’s annoying if you want your covers to all look the same. But seriously, help me out here. This is a rather new phenomenon, isn’t it?
- Book series repackaging through the years – This is more of a pet peeve with a related example. I will never forget standing in a Barnes and Noble with Tamora Pierce as she lamented about the new “Twilight covers” of her Alanna series where it looked like her characters were wearing clothes “from the Gap.” I understand that the Alanna series is older now, but packaging it to look like Twilight doesn’t seem to be the best marketing strategy. It’s a very different book series. Have you seen other books that have be repackaged in weird ways?
Book cover white washing – this is very much a last but certainly not least moment. I know that this is a long and storied tradition of publishing, but it really hit home with me when Julie Kagawa’s Blood of Eden series came out. Why would you use the half face of a white girl on the cover of a book about an Asian-American character? Okay, I know the annoying answer to that question, but seriously. Then, after the uproar, the books got new covers–but not of an actual Asian-American half faced girl. No, the books went the route of the symbol covers instead. Yes, that’s a new fad, but I’m also going to add an eyebrow raise to that movement. What are some other whitewashed covers that have annoyed you guys?
I think I want to say something along the lines of how YA book covers have become really 
frustrating, because they–like the inside flaps of the books they contain–are starting to all look the same. Don’t get me wrong, there is some FABULOUS cover art out there, but there are also books that just seem so … samesie. I’m really not a fan of the new symbol art thing. It seems like too many books are trying to be The Hunger Games. At the very least, it seems the symbols are leading back around to more artsy designs than the half-girl faces used to give us.
Can you see how my ideas are flip flopping all over the place? I understand that books can’t all be fabulous pieces of art like the Throne of Glass redo covers or literally anything written by Jay Kristoff, but …sigh. There is SO MUCH IMPORTANT INFORMATION tucked into these covers. I want to talk about it all with my scholar cap on, but I can’t cover all this stuff with the breadth it deserves in the same paper.
Sigh. I need to decide soon. Fingers crossed.
My Life is a Notebook 
It all has to do with marketing trends, and what has been known to sell. Book covers have a lot less to do with the actual contents of the book than what is selling in a particular category at a particular time. It’s a kind of brand recognition that doesn’t really treat the consumer as an intelligent being– if you’re selling a paranormal romance, by god it better have a muscled torso covered in tattoos, or how else will the reader know that’s what it’s supposed to be? YA’s hot on the girls in dresses–so yeah, toss a girl in a flouncy dress on anything and the reader will go right for it.
With the series things- publishers will tend to repackage series if they think it’s not selling up to potential OR if it is selling much better than expected when it was initially designed. It takes money to do changes like that, they only make that investment if they think the new cover will lead to a noticeable bump in sales. It has nothing to do with trying to mess up your sales, it’s more about putting resources behind a book that wasn’t getting them before.
As for the pieces of women…you see that in all genres. I think the bullshit reasoning often given is that it’s supposed to be easier for the reader to “see herself” as the protag if there’s not much in the way of identifying details.
Those Alanna redesigns are a travesty and I want to burn something down every time I see them.
er…mess up your *shelves* not sales. *proofread fail*
Thank you so much for your comment! You’re speaking to a lot of things that I thought, but at this point I can’t tell what I’m making up in my own head or not. I just wish these trends were a little more accessible to the layperson. I’d LOVE to get my hands on the reports that say this book cover does better like this, etc. And, agreed, on the Alanna covers. Eesh.