Book Cover Cliches? Or "If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em?"

I enjoyed this article about book cover design conventions—

—a topic discussed at length on the most recent episode of Novel Marketing (“Why Your Book Isn’t Selling: Metadata” w guest Dave Chesson—Publisher Rocket). Yes, these covers are cliched, conventional, adhering to formula. But is that bad? Probably not. The main purpose of the cover is to scream, “GENRE!!” at a potential reader.

My favorite cliched cover element is the silhouette of a running human figure (often two…) on the cover of thrillers. My cover designer just sent me a first pass for my upcoming novel, and my first note will be: “Needs a silhouette of a running human figure.” 😆