Extra Nate: Animorphs and the Importance of Good Book Covers

First a special shout out to Nate! Good job, me. You completed the first quarter of blog posts. You don’t have to run any miles at all. You’re the man, man. Anyway let’s talk about Animorphs. The episode came out *checks watch* 4 minutes ago at the time that I’m typing this up. Ben says something controversial in the episode. Something utterly insane. Something… edgy. He says the Animorphs book covers suck. And I totally agree with him.

You see, as a lad growing up in the 90s (aka the greatest years of our lives before the downfall of modern civilization, not to be confused with the 80s which objectively sucked but everyone remembers it fondly) I had been to a Scholastic book fair or too (side note: fuck you Scholastic. Copyright claim deez nuts). I remember seeing the Animorphs book covers. I can tell you they were eye-catching. They did stand out. In that regard they were successful. However they also gave me the impression that these books were for Kindergarteners.

Which one is your favorite? The one from my childhood on the left which shows a small child slowly becoming a CGI thing or the one on the right where he’s half-man, half-lizard, all-disappointing?

Swing and a miss. That’s actually all I have right now. I have to get these blogs out and all I can say is that yeah you need an eye catching book covers and you need to convey what you’re about visually, and you need to convey who the book is for all in one solid bookcover. I don’t know how, but they really needed to sell this as more for young teens/tweens (although maybe I should also ask: who is this for? I’m going back and forth on that). It’s about the horrors of war, the body horror of changing your shape, and child soldiers. The series gets pretty dark from what I read about it and these covers give me a “this is baby’s first chapter book” vibe. If I ever figure out how to make a good cover, I’ll revisit this topic with fresh eyes. I can say that I did like the Edenverse cover (even if it looks amateur to my eyes now) but I don’t think it’s selling our book (I have the numbers to prove that, actually). So I’m no expert on this subject and invite you to share what you think makes a good cover while I congratulate myself once again for completing my blog posts for the quarter. Oh and as always, fuck Scholastic. They copyright striked (struck?) our Catching Fire episode under the impression that we were just reading the book. That’s not the case and anyone who listened to the episode for more than 30 seconds would know that. Fuck you.