50 of the Best Book Covers of the Year (So Far)

Something I should not admit when writing about book covers on a bookish website I have long read: There are those who believe book covers are not worth reading or writing about in the first place. 

For more than a dozen years, I have covered the design of book covers. Whether I was doing it for Fast Company, PRINT, or other publications, someone would eventually reach out to me via social media or email and say it was reductive to separate a book’s cover from an author’s prose. For these people, the words are the high culture, and any fixation on the pretty pictures adorning them is the low. 

I have always been a nerd for both “high” and “low” culture. When I was an editor at Writer’s Digest magazine, I wanted to interview R.L. Stine as much as I did Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I’m from Cincinnati, where we eat chili on top of spaghetti, topped with a pound of shredded American cheese. But I will also thrill at a micro-portion of a trending cuisine served on an impractical vessel that will slightly, but noticeably, dampen the joy of actually consuming it.

Still, I get it. Book covers undeniably serve a marketing function. They are a way of drawing potential readers in and, hopefully, conveying valuable information about the book. Striking covers get people like me to pick books up. Related: I am the type of person who will absolutely buy wine based on the label. (I tend to like what is inside, too. Just not exclusively.)

I have tasted exceedingly bad wines from bottles with fantastic labels. And I have enjoyed exceedingly good wines from bottles with no label at all. 

But how cathartic is it when design and function are perfectly in sync, when the wine is as gorgeous as the label and when the book is as intriguing as its cover?

The more you consider book covers, the more you grapple with interesting questions about the symbiosis—or not—between two distinct forms of creativity.

… What if a cover is in fact better than the book it represents?

… What if it’s worse? What if an incredible book never reaches its deserved audience because its cover went too far in the direction of art or commerce?

… How much of an art is there to how much art you can get away with on a cover… and should that even matter?!

All of this is to say: There might be more going on in a book cover than some think—and book covers are every bit as worthy of a serious read (and celebration) as books themselves. I am Zachary Petit and I will be joining The Rumpus to talk about book covers, design, the design process, and more, every month. I am also a design nerd who has a signed Goosebumps novel framed next to a page from a dead literary legend’s typewriter. Art is what you make of it, whether that’s a piece of writing or what’s wrapped around it.

In my first foray for The Rumpus, I am offering a roundup of 50 great book covers from 2026 (thus far). Taste is subjective, but we’ll call these the best. 

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