Judging books by their covers...

One thing that scanning a lot of book covers for the ol' website has done is remind me of some of the really not good covers.

There are, for example, the "I have no money and no design sense but I have a word processor with multiple fonts" covers favoured by Hal Schuster for some of his books a few years back.

Like for instance...



or



Or, leaving Schuster aside for a moment, the old problem, "it's an unauthorized book and we can't use any Trek imagery on the cover."



And you can't really expect the most professional work from a vanity press book, so perhaps this shouldn't be here:



But there are two covers in particular that make me wince when I see them. First, back to Hal Schuster, and a rare work of fiction from one of his companies. To avoid being sued, he made a lot of changes to the story (which did not please the author) and added "funny" art to make it look like a parody, which is protected speech, though it was never meant as a parody by the author. But the caricature of Tom Baker, looking suspiciously like a camel, misses funny and enters some world of evil.



And finally, with no offense intended to the author, who is clearly having a laugh (given that another book of his is called The 105 Things I Learned During My 14 Years of College, I think I can assume he has a sense of humour)... but this just gives me the Fear...



(Now playing: Sigur Ros, "Untitled 7," ( ).)