FUNNY BOOK COVERS
Since you’ve written a funny book, you know first hand how challenging this genre can be. These same challenges — finding a great angle that delights readers and has them wanting more — apply to your cover design as well. That’s where our team of experienced creatives come into play, collaborating with you to create a cover that’s as great as your book.
A famous though unattributed quote states: “Dying is easy. [Writing] comedy is hard.” Creating funny material is hard because humor is subjective, and often tied to current events. Comedy is cultural and regional, so what flies in New Jersey might fail in Bengaluru. Memorable comedy avoids cliche and banality and needs to walk a careful line between exposing corruption, hypocrisy, and lies and making us laugh, often at terrible tragedy: think Slaughterhouse-Five, about the WW2 Dresden firebombing, American Psycho, which speaks for itself orThe Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic takedown of Soviet tyranny.
When we can distill these same notions into a remarkable book cover design, as well as you’ve done in the book itself, you’ve got a winning combination hitting the shelves.
A funny book cover should depict the type of humor inside
From light humor to dark and political, each style speaks to a different audience. Since an important part of your cover’s job is to generate sales, it needs to draw the attention of that target market.
While contrast and funny juxtaposition work incredibly well in this genre, we still need to offer an indication of what readers can expect inside. When you can work this into an interesting book cover design, it gives the right readers a reason to take a closer look — to pick your book up and see what it’s all about.
Books with a funny subject matter are usually very witty which opens us up to a host of creative directions that can be taken. When you get a team of designers together, these concepts can be quickly developed into fun, exciting and effective covers.
Comedy genres
To delve deeper into this idea, we also need to look at the various subgenres that exist within comedy. Each of them are unique and there’s a limited overlap between them.
Dark Comedy: creates bleak narratives told with humor. Examples include A Clockwork Orange, Catch 22 or the movie Parasite.
Romantic Comedy explores the pitfalls, struggles and joys of love. Titles include Pride and Prejudice, Sleepless in Seattle or Bridget Jones's Diary.
Parody echoes and exaggerates an existing artwork or artist for comedic effect. Spaceballs, This is Spinal Tap and Young Frankenstein are popular examples.
Farce employs absurdity, satire, improbability and mockery. Examples include La Cage Aux Folles and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Tragicomedy combines comedy and tragedy to explore serious or dark themes with humor to lighten the mood. Titles include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Fisher King and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Once we’ve read your manuscript and have an idea of which of these your book falls into, we have the building blocks for the first round of creative brainstorming. With your collaboration, we can quickly develop those initial designs.
You Need a Great Book Cover!
Regardless of genre, nothing represents your book like its cover: it’s a critical marketing and branding tool. You need an experienced and talented design team behind you to stand out from the multiple humorous titles published each year. Your funny book cover must pop from bookstore displays and book-selling websites, pulling eyeballs and generating clicks.
Coverkitchen cooks up visually stunning book covers worthy of the hours you spend writing and the work you put into delivering your brand of humor.
Beni Kim Öldürdü
This dark comedic audiobook tells a light murder mystery centered around the eccentric residents of the high-scale İstanbul Harmony Apartment building, narrated by the victim! Our team recreated the building as a tombstone, echoing the plot and the sarcastic and humoristic writing style.
Rolling in their Graves: Trump Versus Great Minds
The imagery, typography and color palette telegraph the humorous nature of this exploration of US President Donald Trump’s political musings, tweets and quotes. A complex and contentious topic, a quick glance immediately starts to evoke emotion, no matter what your political stance.
How Ya Like Them Apples
The surrealist and disturbing cover imagery evokes a bizarre dark comedy about a bank robber hiding out in an apple orchard.
Go with the pros!
The Coverkitchen design team excels in typography, color psychology and imagery (photography, hand-created or computer-generated illustrations and 3D imagery) and will create your perfect and unique book cover.
We work closely with authors and publishers to create original designs! Your cover is not finished until you sign off on it. Our team is highly trained and experienced, and we love what we do. Our chefs create masterpieces, not fast food - and there’s never a hidden cost or surprise!
Our simple 3 stage design process
Creating the perfect custom design for your business book cover is easy with our simple three-stage design process. You don’t need any design experience or knowledge because we’ll assist you every step along the way.
Step 1: Pre-design process
Select one of our premium services or packages, then answer easy questions to assist our team in creating the best possible cover for your business book.
Step 2: Design process
In approximately 10 working days after receiving your order, we’ll present three different cover concepts, then request feedback. Note: expect a 5-10 day turn-around time between revision requests. Two to three revisions are standard, however, we will keep revising until you’re happy with the design.
Step 3: Production process
When you’ve approved and signed off on the final cover design we’ll get your cover to the final stage: Publishing!
After delivering the files, our team will be available to assist you and answer any questions you may have during the production process.
Three examples of funny book covers produced by our team
Below are just a few examples of cover designs we’ve created for this genre in the past. Each of these designs has been chosen from a set of concepts and developed to the authors liking. Whether you see something you like here or have other ideas you’re interesting in developing, get in touch with our team and we’ll be happy to explore that with you!