Covers Matter: Down with the angst-face.

A statement that will come as no surprise to most of you: I hate, hate, hate 95% of YA covers. You could call it my own personal axe to grind, but somehow, the endless parade of pouty white (and often dead) photographed girls in pretty dresses lying in fields and rivers and bathtubs and running across bridges and through clouds have never really done much for me.

If you like this kind of cover, all the more power to you. I'm not going to get personal. I'm not even going to name names of covers I particularly hate, except in my reviews of individual books.But that doesn't mean I'm going to shut up about it, well, ever.

(If you want to read someone talk about this more eloquently than I, however, you need to head over to Kate Hart's blog for her "Uncovering YA Covers: How Dark Are They?" post, or Rachel Stark's "YA Cover Trends: Why the Obsession with an Elegant Death?" I can't possibly do the topic as much justice as they have.)

Since I am not the sort of white girl to sit and get my angsty-pout on about a problem unless I have a solution, I present to you: Maggie's YA Covers She Actually Wants to Spark a Trend.

Behold, left to right: Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff, Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (links go to Goodreads), simultaneously modeling three things I love on YA covers:

• One, the artsy "album-cover" look,
• two, the "I am a quirky illustrated novel and you will love me and cry because I remind you of your childhood" look,
• and three, the "I am a cover that actually has something to do with the book AND will add to your street cred" look.

Aside from being awesome books--well, I'm going to assume Anya's Ghost is awesome since I haven't actually read it yet--these three covers have all made me stop dead in the bookstore, pick the book in question up, and read the back. And while I haven't yet scraped up the cash to pick up Brooklyn, Burning (though I did review an e-galley) or Anya's Ghost, I actually walked out of the bookstore with Part-Time Indian. So there's that.

Not to mention my teenaged girl friends, supposedly the target demographic for these things, that absolutely refuse to read YA solely because they don't want to be seen with the covers in public.

What I'm trying to say is this, publishers (and small-press publishers, and indie authors): there is a demographic, of teen girls and others alike, however small, that is tired of the way you are marketing YA, and would like to see something different.

I have given you examples of different. No excuses.

And now I'd like to know: what's your "angst-face" on covers that ensures you'll be buying an ebook, if you buy the book at all? What's your Part-Time Indian? Sound off in the comments!