There are two parts to this post – first, when I started
thinking about doing a post on the most memorable-to-me science fiction romance
covers I’d seen in 2019, I took my pen in hand and wrote down the ten which
came immediately to mind. I see something like 3000+ covers a year (in 3 genres)
while doing my weekly new releases column so if a cover stays on my mind that’s
really impactful!
Please read on below the Top 10 for Part Two and my Honorable Mention covers!
Please read on below the Top 10 for Part Two and my Honorable Mention covers!
(Drum roll please.....)
THE TOP 10 IMPACTFUL COVERS!
Moving on to Part Two, I see well in excess of 600 science
fiction romance covers a year while doing the report. This weekend I scrolled through every
single SFR cover which made it to the blog in 2019 and ended up with 40 which
caught my attention above and beyond the others. So about 8% (all numbers approximate). Obviously the
ten I listed in Part One of this discussion are added to the 40 for a total of
50 (or about 8%) for 2019.
Before anyone rushes to apply my purely informal and highly
personal results to their next book marketing campaign, I’m not any kind of an art
or graphic composition expert! And there are giant trends in SFR such as the
sexy manchest and abs, which I myself happily use on my Badari Warriors novels, and
very much appreciate. I found that while looking at the 600+ covers for this
exercise, most of those didn’t stand out to me as much as some others did when seen in a vast grouping of similiar images. They surely do catch my eye from week to week.
I obviously am drawn to certain color palettes too…but who
knows if I’m a typical reader?
On the weekly new releases posts, I include all the covers in the post itself (unless I really find a cover objectionable or too disturbing, or it's not remotely PG-13+, with total nudity for example) but I feature 8 covers each time in the
social media promo for the post, including one that’s my highlighted image. I
strive for variety there. In the spotlight of 8 images weekly, I try to mix professional-looking covers
featuring individuals/couples/aliens/pleasing compositions/differing color
palettes…I lean toward the covers which I feel will catch the eye of a
potential reader as they browse through their streaming social media. My
selection criteria on featured covers for the weekly promo are slightly different than
the criteria I used for this massive end-of-the-year exercise.
So when I assessed my results on memorable covers of 2019,
what did I find attracted me? What
made me linger as I slowly scrolled my way through the list alphabetically by
title? Sometimes it was the stock photo model’s face, or their eyes (I’m a
sucker for piercing/soulful/gorgeous eyes) or the color palette or the ”scifi-ness”
of the cover, or the couple together or just the power of the image overall. (I
have to say for Tasha Black’s Tolstoy
cover up above in the Top 10 it’s the sheer, infectious happiness of the man and the baby. For Lula
Monk’s Dredge in the Honorable Mentions, it’s the unsettling
power of the image. I find it hard to forget that one, very effective in its own way!)
Without further ado, here are the rest of the approximately top 8% of the hundreds of SFR covers I saw in 2019 which made me pause this weekend and
take a longer look. Covers provided in no certain order!
And my thanks to all the wonderfully talented cover artists - if I knew all the names I would certainly share them here! Kudos to the authors who can do their own and make them outstanding. Feel free to add the artists' names in the comments if you so desire.
Fiona Jayde does all of my covers, by the way and I loooove them.
Looking forward to savoring more beautiful, awe inspiring, sexy scifi romance covers in 2020!
