Pretty similar process to all cover design including video games and movies. I know at larger companies they could have focus groups on the initial design concepts done in black and white. Then repeat the feedback process after it is completed in color.

For many indie authors, it IS just the author and the designer. Publishing houses have greater resources than an indie; yet many indie books look just as professional as traditionally published books. Depends on the designer and what the author can afford.

Yeah, right. But then again, even after so many people working on this, some covers still look bad.

To be honest, while this shows a lot of great stuff about the process of cover design, in the background you can also see the problems with it. Mainly, that the author is mostly out of the picture and while they can give a bunch of info on the book, they are not asked for feedback on intermediary steps such as the mood boards or the individual art pieces, that whole thing is decided by the marketing team and when they show the first actual image to the author, it's already a finished cover. It is basically a miniaturized version of an adaptation of the work by a completely different creative team, who might have a different vision, and definitely lives in a different world of creative stimuli. This actually explains a lot about the final covers we see and how they relate to the actual content of the book, or the weaknesses of such relations, since the process of coming up with them is much more tuned to creating something that looks professional and works as a poster than something that actually represents the story in question. Additionally, the entire trend-hopping idea is circular in logic. If covers are used to market the book to a specific genre and not to represent the contents of the book, design aspects like hand lettering or making a series of covers and then subverting it have no intrinsic value, and are only done because others do it, others with a similar mindset of doing things because others do it and so on. If everyone looks at everyone else to predict the trend, and everyone assumes everyone else knows what they're doing, a simple mistake or a minuscule aspect without much thought given by one party might be picked up by three others, then seven more, and you got yourself a trend that no one knows where it came from with no actual purpose behind it. It is basically a process of citogenesis, just with marketing instead of science. A cover that is a true and honest representation of the actual story within, conveying its mood and character as faithfully as possible, being an extension of it rather than an adaptation, could still be adjusted to market trends and would be a better cover in every way. It would be a better marketing tool because instead of maximizing sales within the scope of a cover's capabilities, it would maximize the number of _right_ people buying the book, the people who the book actually speaks to, by minimizing the discrepancy between the book and its cover. That, in turn, would increase ratings and word of mouth marketing, and build trust with the readers that whatever identifying trait is represented on the cover -- the author, the publisher, perhaps a series -- is going to be honest with them, and if they see a cover that makes them feel in a particular way, they can trust the book to get them to feel exactly like that for a whole lot longer. Which is precisely what we want as readers, we all have our ideals of what we seek in a story, and if we could pick that out just by the cover it would help us pick up new books easier, without having to look for recommendations or feel out the author first. So, to return to your original point, you are absolutely right to bash covers, no matter how much work went into them. Your feelings induced by said cover are valid, and what you see in them is your honest, descriptive criticism, which is invaluable to any self-respecting creative. If a cover makes you feel weird, or if after reading the story you feel like a promise the cover made was broken, it is still a real problem, and you should by all means speak up about it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I guess.

@@DeeSnow97 My first thought watching this video. I'm suprised that authors do not really have a part in making the cover. I mean the one who create the world and the stories and the vision are totally different than the one who illustrate it.

@@DeeSnow97 All of this

Right, I remember reading something along the lines of Kafka explicitly not wanting the "bug" on the cover of The Metamorphosis. To no surprise, so many covers of the book blatantly disregarded his wish, with really blatant pictures of beetle-type creatures

Don't worry, it definitely will go away (and resurface) as design trends do.

It's stuff like this that causes the video to bug me. They kept talking about a collaborative effort to make sure everyone is happy before even showing it to the author. You end up with bland uninspired covers when you try to please so many people.

agreed, editors are boring people

Yessss!

I agree. I'm always pulled towards interesting covers. Boring covers hint at a book people don't have faith in imo

Yeah, exactly. I think the feedback should come from potential consumer not stakeholder wtf

To get feedback from a single consumer, or even 10 consumers, is not enough because of their personal bias and things each individual likes. To get feedback on covers from consumers, they would need to pitch the cover to hundreds of people and gather all the data, that way the personal bias of each person is less impactful in the final decision. When the stakeholders are the ones giving the feedback i think it's safe to assume they are people with experience who aren't looking and thinking about what they personally like, but what the consumers are buying and generally like, also considering general Design concepts/rules that shouldn't be broken, much like what she says at 12:05 about trying to not consider what she likes herself. In the case of The Neon Gods, I personally prefer the final cover by far compared to the others, but that doesn't mean it's the best cover for the book or the cover that will sell more.

I loved the cover with the Greek statue/black-and-white photo of a woman on the cover (4:14 the one with a similar style to The Madens). In my opinion, it would be more relevant to the Dark Academia trend which is super popular right now, and objectively speaking it's more beautiful and interesting than generic chair in a shadowy room.