Kablooie

This isn’t really a useful blog post of any kind. It’s just an interesting observation I had one day while at work.

I was organizing some books in the romance section when a particular cover caught my eye. I realized I’d seen this cover – not exact, but with the same concept – in other places. When I brought it up to a fellow co-worker, she pointed out another book I hadn’t seen. It, too, had the same concept. So then I wondered –

How many of these books are out there with this cover design and why is it a thing?

The concept I speak of is the exploding flower.

That’s really all it is. The flower can be any type or any color, but they all seem to have be dipped into liquid nitrogen and then shattered. Having one or multiple flowers on a book's cover isn't a new idea - you'll see that everywhere any day of the week. But a flower in the middle of breaking apart? How did this become a go-to image for publishers? Does it even represent the book in any way?

I wrote down as many books as I could remember with that image. I came up with several. Then I poked around online and found a few I’d forgotten and a few I’d never heard of before. How many did I get?

Nine. Nine books with flowers shattering on them. That’s…kind of a lot for such an image one would first think to be unique. Clearly it’s not, and for whatever reason it’s being used in all genres. Fiction. Romance. Teen. So I figured I would share them with you and you can go, “Huh.” with me as we boggle at the strangely common use of the shattered flower.

 

Interesting how almost all of them are some variation of pink, with just I Belong to You using a white flower (although to be honest, it looks like it's been photoshopped to be monochrome), Also, Dark Song is kind of a stretch since I got a better look at it - more liquid than anything. But still falling apart.

I don't know if publishers have noticed this, but if they have I suppose they don't much care. At the very least each flower appears to be different. So luckily they're not all using the same flower image.

Do you have any thoughts on this odd little trend?