Yesterday, I asked if anybody knew of a Go Fug Yourself for book cover art—and about five minutes after I hit the publish button, I remembered that my friends at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have been poking fun at romance covers for just over three years now. Here's an excerpt from one of their most recent outbursts, in response to the cover for A Warrior's Taking:

"Behold, the Avon checklist: Mullet? Check. Black pants, no shirt? Check. Heroine with absurdedly big, absurdedly curly hair? Check. Off the shoulder dress with possibly surgically augmented boobs about to burst forth in nippulous delight? Check and double check. Barefoot and showing of flexed calf? Check. Ribbons flying out in a flirty approximation of girly erection? Check."

Speaking of romance covers, I also got a note from Marianne Mancusi about a segment she'd produced for Better.TV that goes backstage at Dorchester to reveal how those sweeping illustrations are created, using C. L. Wilson's Queen of Song and Souls as an example. Watch for the wall of covers!

But back to the merciless evisceration: There's Judge A Book By Its Cover, which is written by a staff member at a public library, and covers a slightly wider range of genre material. And the commentary at this gallery of bad covers is a bit hit or miss, but there's some snappy one-liners in there, if you can bring yourself to look at enough aesthetic trainwrecks. I tried to comfort myself in the knowledge that I was getting paid for it, and I still had trouble pressing forward.