What Makes a Good Cover? The example of "Haunted Stars."

I once wrote a blog on “What Makes a Good Cover,” establishing four criteria and applying them to Bradley Sharp’s wonderful artwork for my book Temporary Planets for Transitory Days. (See the image in the sidebar.) My current novel, Haunted Stars, is again privileged to showcase Brad’s work, and, though I believed the last cover could not be topped, this new one is now my favorite.

 The criteria for a good cover are these:

1.      Accuracy of subject matter. It should not mislead the reader. The visuals do not have to be exact (it’s impossible to depict precisely what’s in an author’s mind, and often the author is more vague than one assumes). An artist should be allowed to go in the best creative direction to make the image appealing, but the cover should still be tied in some obvious way to the subject matter of the book.

2.      Accuracy of mood. Even more important is to match the book’s emotions. The cover for a horror novel should not be “cheery,” and a romance book should be . . . romantic. The cover needs to suggest what the reader will feel while following the story, the primary tone and mood of the book.

3.      Visual appeal. It needs to catch attention, to grab someone perusing bookshelves or browsing online. This call can be subtle—a whisper instead of a klaxon shout—but a hook still needs to be thrown. The viewer must look again, be intrigued, by a single red leaf in a field of green, or a baby doll that has the expression of a murderer. 

4.      A creative spark, a difference, a uniqueness. Something new, a surprise, the unexpected, a hint that “You’ll get a different experience in this book.” Such a quality is hard to define, and you might not notice it at first:  a raised question presented visually, a promise of a unique reading adventure.

In all respects, Brad’s latest effort excels. For a larger view of it, go here. 

Without giving away specifics of the story, I can attest that the cover is accurate in terms of the novel’s events. From the red sun and the yellow orb beneath it, from the mountain and the jagged white formations below, to the single human protagonist in a landscape of varied vegetation—all these are taken directly from incidents in the story.

 And the mood of the picture is a perfect fit, “haunting” in all sorts of ways—the strange eye on the surface of a planet, the mysterious undefined whiteness of the spiked horizon, the layers of mist in the landscape below—all these suggest the unknown that will confront and baffle the viewer. The first book in the series was called The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes, and this motif has been carried consistently by Brad through all four covers—a lone adventurer in space who lives to encounter more alien wonders. The solitary figure is both the protagonist and the reader, for both are led into peculiar and different worlds.

 As for the visual appeal, the picture is rich and varied:

·         First, note the symmetry. You can draw a line down the center of the image and both halves almost mirror each other. The sun, the orb, the mountain, and the figure on the raised mound all form a vertical line-up. Symmetry in nature is surprising and mysterious, and thus adds to the unsettling mood.

·         This vertical thrust is balanced by strong horizontal features, from the blue-black ground at the bottom of the picture and the soft lines of distant white mists, to the hard edge of the thin cloud on the mountain (a touch I really like), and, most fitting, the horizontal banner of the title. These two directions sew each other together in an organized display.

·         And then there’s the contrast, which works perfectly. The strong white letters, the sun, the world, and the mountain stand out strongly against the dark background, as does the whiteness of the spiky formations in the center. And then, reversing the darks and lights, the bottom half of the picture uses dark foreground objects that contrast against the white background to make the figure and vegetation stand out.

·         And finally the color scheme. It’s primarily cool blues and purples, with frosty whites and intense blacks, in both the foreground and background. But then, again to provide contrast, the central globe is swirled in warm yellow-orange, and the red sun is a hot glowering ember in the sky. So there’s dynamic difference in color as well as tone.

 And for the creative spark or uniqueness, one could argue that just the design of the picture itself, how all the straight lines (in the figure at the bottom, in the jagged white formations of the center) lead to the central eye, the big ominous question of the picture, and then further upward to the title—exactly where they should lead. But the eye itself, of course, is what stands out, the spark, the grabber, the deepest mystery. What’s an eye doing on a planet?

Wow. That’s a lot for just one picture. But it all ties together.

And I’m so proud that it’s my novel which gets to wear it.