Book Cover Designs - Matthew Goodman, Nicole Caputo

I admit it: I routinely judge books' potential by their covers. I have a tendency towards impulse selections, both on Netgalley and from my library's ebook collection. Both websites start me out in a gallery of thumbnails. Covers are crucial: they determine whether I'll check out the blurb. So when I saw a book cover on Netgalley that displayed a bunch of book covers I'd previously seen on Netgalley, I knew I had to read it.

Book Cover Design is organized by designer: for each one, there is a short biography, a paragraph describing "The Designer's Approach," and several full pages of the designer's work. The book gave me a new appreciation for the breadth of some of the artists' design styles. My absolute favourite aspect, however, wasn't the covers themselves but the short paragraph in which the artist describes, in their own words, their methodology. While most of the designers assert that reading the book is necessary for cover design, there are several who admit that they don't have the time and don't see the need. I confess I prefer the covers that speak to the soul of the book, the type of cover you look at again after reading the story and you realize what scene they're portraying, and see all the little details from all the minor moments in the story. Covers like these, in fact:
Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson Vicious Circle (Felix Castor, #2) by Mike Carey Night Watch (Discworld, #29) by Terry Pratchett The Complete Romances by Chrétien de Troyes The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1) by Brandon Sanderson We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory Unwrapped Sky (Caeli-Amur, #1) by Rjurik Davidson
While I had seen quite a few of the covers in Netgalley and my library's ebook site, I admit I hadn't read a lot of them. The covers displayed in the book tended to be nonfiction, classics, and literary novels, and I'm pretty much a genre reader through and through. Even so, I loved seeing the sheer variety of covers displayed in the book. Some of my favourites:
The Gates of Europe A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy Dinner Is Served by Arthur Inch  Missing Link The Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution by Jeffery Donaldson El asesino hipocondríaco by Juan Jacinto Muñoz Rengel The United States of Paranoia A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker The Art of Deception Illusions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind by Brad Honeycutt Censoring an Iranian love story A novel of love's triumph over irony by Shahriar Mandanipour
I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the inspirations and approaches that go into creating the covers that lure me into requesting more books than I can possibly handle. If you're also susceptible to cover-love, this may be the book for you.

~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Schiffer Publishing Ltd, in exchange for my honest review.~~