When I first saw the covers of the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series, I wasn't crazy about them. I thought they were too simple or plain. But they have grown on me over time, and I think they are very effective. They are all a solid color with a single illustration in the center, distinctive serif type for author's name at top and book title at the bottom. If you see them lined up on a shelf, they line up nicely with author at top, symbol in the middle, and book title at the bottom. I couldn't get into reading them but have enjoyed the series on Starz. Maybe getting into the show has helped the covers appeal to me, or maybe their appeal has grown on me over time. I like simple things and they get the message across without a lot of clutter, and each element of the cover is well done.
Another series that I did get into reading, at least for a while, is the Sookie Stackhouse books. These covers have always seemed cheesy to me, and even more so after seeing the slick, bloody, gritty vampires on the HBO series. The books went with the down-home quality of Sookie and the show went more with the worldliness of the vampires. The books all have the same type of naive illustration and the author's name in large type at the top (Charlaine Harris sells them) and the title at the bottom. Over time they moved away from the hand-lettered look (Living Dead in Dallas in 2002) to a more sophisticated sans serif face (From Dead to Worse in 2008).
