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Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.
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In April, I rounded up some of the best book covers of 2024 so far. Those were for books that published between January and the end of April. I then revisited the best covers for books published between May and the end of July, highlighting several fantastic and memorable works of literary art. Then, of course, came the roundup of fantastic book covers for titles that published between August and the end of October.
Not to be forgotten are the books that hit shelves in the final two months of 2024. It can be way too easy to overlook them, especially in an era where “best of the year” lists are racing to publish as early as the end of September (and in a year where a presidential election pretty much trounced the hopes of books publishing in the weeks afterward). Let’s take a look at some of the knockout covers for books published in November and December 2024.
Book cover design is interesting because it’s got to play to some trends, got to play to some conventions of genre and age category, and because it’s got to play to consumer tastes. We need book covers to sell a book—it’s the number one marketing opportunity for any title. But we need those covers to also give insight into the story and to be nice to look at and to be easy to render on mobile.
Important to all of this is the team behind the cover’s creation. For too long and still to this day, cover designers and artists are rarely credited for their work. The time it takes to find this information is embarrassing in 2024, and still, many of the covers you’ll see below don’t have this information available. Publishers still don’t put it on the landing pages for these books, so it takes good Googling and a lot of luck to dig up names to credit. Unfortunately, this also makes it easier for AI-generated art to get through to book covers, which we have already seen this year.
I send a big thank you to everyone who has reached out upon discovering these posts to send along corrections or additions to the design team. It’s so appreciated.
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