The premise of Lousy Book Covers is simple. "Just because you CAN design your own book cover doesn't mean you SHOULD," a point the Tumblr has been making October 2011, when Nathan Shumate posted the blog's first ghastly cover, Untied Shoelaces of the Mind Anthology, showing what appears to be a peacock made of spaghetti becoming one with a human face. It's glorious, it's awful, it's beautiful, it's horrific.
It makes us glad Lousy Book Covers exists. Here are some of our other favorites.
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I would read the shit out of C.A.T.
“Meet C.A.T., a robotic feline with self-learning capabilities. Oh, by the way, self-learners are illegal on the Triton Base. If its abilities are discovered, it will be terminated, so it’s been keeping a low profile. Until now!
There’s trouble in the Neptune System. Space-planes are crashing into asteroids, and one robo-cat is destined for the spare parts room, should anything happen to its owner, Commander Zacman. When he sets out on a suicide mission to find the rogue asteroids, C.A.T. stows away on board. Its mission…keep Zacman alive…at all costs…or suffer the fate of being permanently deleted.”
It looks like a novelization of Laser Cats.
HELL. YES.
Regret going for a sip of water before perusing.
I manage a fiction dept. in a bookstore (fancyass way of saying I fill in sub sheets) and I have had shit like this, and worse, come from legit publishers. Sometimes it even lands up on the shelves when the eejits in distro screw up. As for self-published books? It’s not unknown for us to deposit unwanted sample copies in the bin.
Hey, the guy that did “Cowboys and Indians” totally stole that bitchin’ cover art from the back pages of my 6th-grade Spanish-class notebook! He erased the “KA-BLAM” and “POW POW POW” sound effects lettering, but otherwise it’s exactly as I remember drawing it.
Except for the cartoony Michigan J. Frog, that is. MY war art was serious.
Apparently it’s the right of every zombie to wipe their ass on a bright green felt carpet in front of a novelty gravestone from Target.
Is No. 4 generated from Second Life characters?