The old saw about judging a book by its cover isn’t meant in a literal sense, and yet it’s true. We often do judge books by their covers. A cheesy, sloppy, or visually uninformative cover has the potential for turning readers away. A visually uninteresting one can make a book invisible amid a crowd of more eye-catching offerings.
Lesbian and gay pulp fiction share a checkered past with genre fiction in that the covers were at one time universally cheesy and sometimes laughable. We’ve come a long way, both in SFF/Paranormal covers and in LGBT covers both romance and not, but we’ll probably never be entirely free of bad covers.
When you look at covers, what catches your eye? Do you prefer the illustrated ones over the photo manipulation ones? What makes you run for the hills and what do you wish would go away?
If you’re an author, how much do you like being involved in the cover process?
Oh, and do you have any favorite LGBT SFF covers you’d like to share?