Writing a book is no small accomplishment. After countless “final final” drafts, edits, and rewrites, finally holding your manuscript—printed, bound, covered—has to feel pretty much fantastic. The work is done. Now it’s up to the reader to pick it off the shelf or stop their scroll and hit “add to cart.” That’s where words take a back seat to images. Before anyone reads the first sentence you no doubt pored over, they see the cover—and that first impression can make or break everything that came before it.
A well-designed cover might draw someone in and earn a long-term place on a bookshelf or coffee table. A terrible one? Well, it turns out there’s a place for those too. Reddit’s r/TerribleBookCovers is dedicated to sharing some of the weirdest, funniest, and most atrocious examples out there. We’ve stacked a few of our best (worst?) ones for you to check out below.
