I mean, really bad ones.
First a side note. I browse a lot of old book covers, aka pulp fiction, doing research. A lot. And the one thing that always amazes me is just how bad a rap romance has always gotten with regard to the covers in the genre. I guess the thing that gets me the most is that while there may be some bad covers in the romance genre, they ain’t got nothing on the really old covers from other genres. All popular genre have their problems but, for me, mysteries and science fiction have produced some doozies of covers over the years. I’m talking about covers that make romance novels at their most sensual look tame by comparison. Oye. I’m making a collection of them so if you know of any really bad ones from any genre let me know what they are.
But on to the reason for this post, I ran across an article called The 16 Most Misleading Book Covers of all Time. And I immediately thought, yeah, they won’t be that bad.
But wow.
The majority of romance novels aren’t even in the running for this list. These are bad because they’re just wrong. Totally wrong. Not just a misinterpretation of what’s in the story, which is common in romance covers, but many of them are an absolute jaw-dropping “what is THAT?” bad. As in “how did they get from point A to point B” bad. Or “were there no editors” bad?
Think I’m exaggerating? Well here are my favorites from the article:
And my absolute top, I want a copy of this to hang on my wall, favorite…
So, really, know of any romance novels covers that rise that that level of bad? Cause I want to see them.