The Unofficial SPFBOX Cover Contest

It’s that time of year again! The tenth annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off AKA SPBOX is now underway. In previous years, the competition’s host, Mark Lawrence, would normally host a cover contest where each blog would nominate and vote on their favourite covers from the 300 entrants, and readers could also vote on a separate public poll. Alas, there is no official cover contest this year… But that won’t stop us from hosting our own!

Nils and Trudie are putting on their judging hats and choosing their favourite covers from this year’s SPFBO. And as you’d expect from the quality of self-published books these days, it’s a tough competition! A good book cover has to do more than look pretty – it has to convey the genre and grab our interest.

Scroll down to see which book covers Nils and Trudie have picked from each blogging team and find our winners at the bottom. Did we pick your favourites? Find out below!

Fantasy-Faction

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Fantasy Book Critic

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Lynn’s Books + The Critiquing Chemist

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

The Weatherwax Report

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Before We Go Blog

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Queen’s Book Asylum

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Philip Chase

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

CoversWithCassidy

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Kitty G Books

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Captured in Words

Nils’s Picks:

Trudie’s Picks:

Our Finalists

Well done to our top picks so far! It has been incredibly difficult to pick just three from each group, but now we’re whittling it down to our top cover of the year! We couldn’t just settle on a few, so we decided on five finalists. Here’s what Nils and Trudie chose as their top five:

Trudie’s Top Five:

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but that’s exactly what I’m doing here. There have been some fantastic covers in this year’s SPFBO (as always!) which hasn’t made this easy. Most of the time, I go by my first instinct – with the cover that grabs my attention. That is, after all, the purpose of a cover! To draw me in. But a cover should do more than that. It also needs to inform me of what the story is about so I’ll give it a second glance, or at the very least intrigue me enough to pick it up and check out the blurb so I have an idea of whether the book is for me.

Personally, I like books with a character on the cover, though I’m also a sucker for something aesthetically beautiful for my shelf. To me, typography is important – just having pretty art isn’t enough if the typography is lacking. I really liked the typography of Trollgrave and Born of Scourge. I also love when typography interacts with the background art, such as with Darkness Below.

Some of the illustrations on these covers are also incredibly detailed and lovely to behold, such as Born of Scourge, Gates of Hope, and Oak King Holly King. My only gripe is that by looking at these covers, I can’t always tell what these books are about at first glance. That said, they all ended up on my Kindle!

Sadly, I had to narrow my favourite covers down to just five. These are my five favourite from SPFBOX based on their beautifully eye-catching design that instantly drew me in:

I’m not usually a fan of military fantasy, but the cover for However Many Must Die, and that powerful title to match, is just incredible. This is one to watch!

I do enjoy a good fantasy noir, and the world of Mushroom Blues combines that with what appears to be a cyber-mushroom aesthetic. I love mushrooms, so consider me intrigued! It helps that I also love the colours on this cover.

Red isn’t my colour, but I was instantly drawn to My Boss is the Devil. The illustration is crisp and it tells me this is going to be a fun book.

The Faithful Dark is exactly my kind of book – gothic, broody, and the illustration just stands out and grabs my attention.

I said that I appreciate prettiness, and What the Echoes Say is a very pretty cover combining tree branches with a gradient blue shade that just speaks to me. I have no idea what this book is about based on the cover, but I’m eager to find out.

Nils’s Top Five:

Trudie created this page, and I added my picks once it was all mostly done. After reading their description of what covers are about, I decided I didn’t really need to say anything else about that. Naturally, our tastes differ, and mine are often quite erratic, but we both agree on the basic principles of what makes a great cover.

As such, it’s interesting to note that when selecting five finalists out of 300, without talking to each other, we ended up with a total of seven different books. Three of the books appear on both our Top-5 lists.

These are my thoughts on the covers I picked:

This cover of Mushroom Blues pulls me in because it’s both vibrant and the title is clear even as a very small thumbnail, and when looking closer, there are little details to discover – like the giant mushrooms in the background. I’ve heard good things about this book, so it’s on my radar, but it’s the cover that sells it to me.

Once again, a cover that reads great as a thumbnail, even if just the words Boss and Devil can really be seen. The art style is far from what I’d expect from a fantasy novel, so it hints this is something a little bit outside of the norm.

I spent a lot of time looking at this cover before I spotted the dog. This cover confuses me. On the one hand, it looks a bit cheap and amateurish, but at the same time, I feel like that might be intentional. There’s more going on than what you see at first glance. I’m also reluctant to admit that I didn’t notice the author’s name until after staring at the picture for way too long.

This cover is an example of when just about everything is done right. Strong, stylized imagery and beautiful colours. I’m not sure there’s much to say other than that this is just plain great.

Another bold cover, but this one a bit more in line with current trends – at least as far as I understand them. Words and symbology. I feel like there were plenty of examples of this among the covers this year, but of them, this is the one that stood out the most.

Our Winner

There can only be one winner! Of all 300 covers entered into SPFBO this year, which cover was our favourite?

As things would have it, we (Nils and Trudie) picked different winners, and we ended up in an awkward exchange of “no, you decide” until we eventually decided to ask friends and coworkers for their opinions. The people at Nils’s work were evenly split between the two options, but on Trudie’s end, two more people voted for one of the two options.

As such, without further ado, and so on, this year’s winner is:

Congrats to the winners of our unofficial cover contest! Of course, this is all in good fun and there are some truly amazing covers this year. We hope that you’ll be drawn to some of these covers and books as we are. Would you have chosen any of our favorites, or do our choices surprise you? Drop us a comment below with your favorite covers of the contest!