Even a bad novel takes a whole lot of effort to write. We’re talking months or years of dedication to a single product–a story that a human soul had percolating inside him until it dripped to print one letter, word, sentence, and then page at a time.
Which is what makes Kindle Disasters–a Tumblr dedicated entirely to the worst totally real, and often on-sale e-book covers in the world–such a tragically hilarious experience. It’s a collection of book covers from independent authors who, while nobly bootstrapping their own publication, improvised the most important step: the cover art.
Of course there are intentional jokes in the Kindle Disaster collection–horses grasping humans in the full embrace of smut fiction. But those so barely qualify as a disaster to the bad e-book cover connoisseur. My refined palate now requires the Confucian simplicity of a How To Deal With Hippo Encounter; the post-Goosebumps, post-Lifetime Channel montage expressionism of Hide and Seek; or the uncensored visual libido behind the Doom-meets-Cats meets-Burt Reynolds cover of the 553-page opus The Senate Complete.
The uncontested king of Kindle Disasters has to be Lawrence Ambrose, who may be a fine enough fantasy writer, but is (or employs) a true auteur in Microsoft Paint. If I’m ever so bold as to take a stab at the next great American novel, Ambrose, you can have 50% of my advance.