53 book covers

50+ Kick-butt Book Cover Designs

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Have you ever been seduced to buy or borrow a book, simply because the cover was so well designed? That’s why it’s worth getting cover design right. In this post, we’ve collected 53 excellent book covers in many different styles. These covers will inspire not only any book cover design you do, but your designs in other areas as well.

1. The Mad Ones

2. Bases Loaded

3. Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him

4. Busted

5. Bow’s Boy

6. Wonderful World: A Novel

7. A Slow Death

8. We Must Love One Another Or Die

9. Red Harvest

10. The Vintage Book Of Contemporary Scottish Fiction

11. Censoring an Iranian Love Story

12. The Sheriff of Yrnameer

13. Disguise

14. Scenes of Academic Life

15. Something for the Weekend

16. Under the Clock

17. The Economics of Innocent Fraud

18. The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning

19. Otherwise Pandemonium

20. Judging Obscenity

21. Kid Rex

22. World as Laboratory

23. Treason by the Book

24. The Craftsman

25. The Manly Modern

26. Say You’re One of Them

27. The Memory of Running

28. The Girls Who Went Away

29. The Brief History of the Dead

30. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

31. The Good Rat

32. Backstory

33. I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson

34. The Bill from My Father

35. City of Tiny Lights

36. Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

37. The Mayor’s Tongue

38. Leather Maiden

39. The Dog of Marriage

40. The Tattoo Artist

41. Sun in a Bottle

42. Chances Are

43. Chicago

44. Final Exits

45. The Edifice Complex

46. The Female Thing

47. The Best American Crime Writing 2005

48. Then We Came to the End

49. Kockroach

50. Stiff

51. Animal Farm

<52. The Devil and Sonny Liston

<53. Devil in the Details

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Discussion 54 Comments

  1. Vasili says:

    I only read one book on the list: Animal Farm. BLAH. I hated it.

    Nice list. Some of the covers are really interesting! :)

    • Peter Petersen says:

      Animal Farm was one of the best books I’ve ever read. Maybe you just didn’t understand what the author wanted to say. If you are from the former Soviet Union: don’t feel insulted by the book, the story also applies to the french revolution and Stalin indeed was not good.

      • Vasili says:

        Oh, I understood what the author was trying to say, I just didn’t like how it was portrayed. I’m more of the straight forward type of person, not the “let’s hide the message in animals”. ;)

    • Saro says:

      I thought that book was nice :) I like the cover too.

    • geoff brown says:

      A classic, one of the best books ever written. But, to each his own.

  2. p-ter says:

    not impresive….

  3. Jaybo says:

    this is an unimpressive list, some of Michael Crichton’s book cover’s should be on here, such as Next, Jurassic Park – The Lost World, Sphere, to name a few. Not to mention other classic novels.

  4. Bariski says:

    I don’t like all of them, but few yes they are inspiring. Thanks for sharing.

  5. I’m going to disagree with the above posts, I think these covers are great, although they do falter a bit near the end.

    Most of them are great showcases of expressive and original graphic design though. Personal favorite at the moment: ‘Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him.’ Probably because I immediately thought, “Hey, this looks like a Vonnegut design.”

  6. Arnold says:

    IMHO some of these book covers are not that good at all….like #5 and #7

    how about the ‘The Secret by Rhonda Byne’…
    anyway I like the #35 and #3

  7. Ano Nymity says:

    This is an unexceptional bunch, in my opinion. A few were very good, but the rest just seem to blend in, somewhat blandly, I might add.

  8. mateo85 says:

    nice old style

  9. noushad says:

    Fantastic article

  10. Emil Lyngbo says:

    Boring most of them. Why aren’t there any modern book covers?
    The only ones I like, is the jamie oliver one because of it’s calm sunday morning feel, and the very last one, because of its pattern repitition and colors.

  11. markus says:

    2,3,24,29 was good.. although not so inspiring

  12. a says:

    15, 17 and 37 the rest just made my scrolling finger hurt

  13. JMJ says:

    Great topic! Some of the covers are really interesting for me but others are not and to be honest bit boring.

  14. Saro says:

    Most one are rather average.

  15. simple present sense says:

    Not impresive at all.
    This post only waste my bandwidth and time!

  16. SnakeJake says:

    I love to see bookcovers as I am a bookcover designer myself. Great list for some much needed inspiration.

  17. karol says:

    some of them are really, really good.

  18. Ogrehulk says:

    I thought the list was great. Most of the covers, I noticed, had double meanings or were just messed up and should have never been titled that way (i.e. #50: What “lives” do cadavers live other than on the table?; #33 is an ‘autobiography’ of Jackie Robinson that apprently “[He] never had it made”… :)

    Funny misshaps or intentional…Regardless, I find not just good and horrible designs but a lot of humor as well, which is why I would have to agree with the list.

  19. Jason says:

    Cool collection. Funny how the majority of these are older books.

  20. Rick says:

    What an amazing post! Loved this!

  21. nate says:

    I defintely buy a book if it’s cover is intriguing. I recently bought this one at goodwill: http://www.northshire.com/siteinfo/coverimages/0/1/4/014200362xa.jpg

    still haven’t read it though

  22. John Deere says:

    42 and 51 are good.

  23. Melody says:

    Uninspired

  24. Filip says:

    Most of them are quite horrendous, meaning the covers not the contents for those I cannot speak since I have never read a single one.
    Some nice ones though

  25. ims says:

    peace be upon u :)

    some of the books are a good piece of inspiration but most of them belong to the covers that turn my mind away from the book !

    thanks

  26. Jon Samson says:

    Once again an interesting post that doesn’t contain crap trend art featured on 1000 other blogs, but rather art that is interesting and playful, gets negative comments.

    These covers are great there is a variety, they are clever, humorous and show a strong understanding of design.

    Just because a post doesn’t show you how to follow trends like sheep and mimic other people’s doesn’t make it uninspiring. “Current” covers (not “modern”) are fine but generally are over produced.

    Also, wth is with the posts promoting books over the covers in relation to the topic. Yes, the cover should in some way relate to the content but being a fanboy here for you favorite book misses the topic entirely.

    Thank you for this article!

  27. mat says:

    Next week: Inspiring Cereal Box Covers!

  28. snnaqvi says:

    Good collection

  29. Rob says:

    I think it’s a fantastic list.

    What a great way to demonstrate how flexible and diverse a book cover can be.
    Little disappointed with some of the comments…funny how negative some people can be…anyone would think they were paying you for their precious browsing time.

    As for my two cents, for all those questioning the omission of Jurassic Park…good logo…average cover.

    Keep up the good work.

    • Antoine says:

      Could not agree more.
      Beautiful list of covers, great books.

      Although feedback is always great, some people should really concentrate on adding to the topic rather than simply disagreeing. It would make more interesting conversations :) .

  30. Modisana says:

    I actually hate almost all of them but I dont want to say that I do incase people start attacking me, so Ill say the same thing I always say on Video Copilot…

    “Oh wow, nice work keep it up Andrew Kramer” :-D

  31. David W. says:

    Isn’t it funny one of the books is about a guy with the last name of Kramer? Even Andrew’s relatives are famous! Nice list, some are really cool. :D

  32. Quintin says:

    All except a few are rather uninspiring…

  33. John says:

    A showcase of print media at last. Some interesting ones. I really thought I’d find “A Clockwork Orange” here.

    http://covers.fwis.com/images/items/562.jpg?1229644463

  34. fung says:

    they are easy to make, but the ideas are very nice
    It’s more about design than technique.
    Thanks for sharing

  35. Sam says:

    Great collection, some very inspiring designs.

  36. I just love The Brief History of the Dead. Its terrific

  37. “City of Tiny Lights” That’s my favorite one right there! I love the animate looking cities and towns. I know Comcast has been doing something like that recently in there commericials.

  38. I thought the “busted” cover was quite clever.

  39. testorck says:

    A lot of these, if not all of them, appear throughout this site:

    http://bookcoverarchive.com/

    Some great, some not, but worth a browse for sure.

  40. Luke says:

    This one is really bad, only cover I “liked” was 13, rest is just old junk, not clever at all…

  41. Marina says:

    Ok, they might me creative. But they are all ugly covers, and I woulnd buy any of them. =D I buy beautiful covers. Creativeness comes next.

    Design isnt just creating something new, but new AND good looking. These, and is MY opinion, are not book covers, but experiments.

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