Christine DeSmet is the author of the Fudge Shop Mysteries series of cozies, and the Mischief in Moonstone series. Her latest book is When the Dead People Brought a Dish-to-Pass.
Wisconsin’s autumn displays fiery reds, sunlit golds, and orange licks on trees and bushes.
The publishing business worries about book cover colors because we want to appeal to readers. I have great covers for my autumn traditional mystery, Five-Alarm Fudge, and the romantic-mystery novella, When the Dead People Brought a Dish-to-Pass.
My publisher chose a lot of brown with orange for the Halloween cover. Brown is considered trustworthy, the color of earth. Brown is common on historical novels, often in duet with blue, also a good for biographies and self-help books.
A self-help book by fellow Blackbird writer Laurie Buchanan, with a teal-blue cover, looks at the effect of colors on people. In Note to Self, A Seven-Step Path to Gratitude and Growth, Laurie notes, “Color is energy made visible.”
What color is your novel? Associated with your character? Plot? What energy is visible in your plot or pages?
The Pantone experts chose “Future Dusk” as the 2025 color of the year. It’s a cross between deep blue and purple. Will you be painting your living room walls with it? Designers think so.
Buchanan suggests deep colors like violet seem to increase our “connection with our higher self and help us function from a place of present-moment awareness.”
Deep colors (but not black so much) suggest wisdom. Consider the importance of the blueberry patch in William Kent Krueger’s 2024 mystery, Spirit Crossing. Blue “unleashes our creative flair and helps us to function from a place of endless original thought,” Buchanan notes. The boy Waaboo operated from original thoughts whenever he came across a blueberry patch (for better or worse).
The 2024 Pantone fave was orange, called “Peach Fuzz.” Orange is about pleasure, delight, respect.
On Goodreads, 787 book covers used dominant orange—the most of any color except black that yielded 2,159 covers—probably for serious mysteries and horror.
Linked-In’s marketing people analyzed colors: 1) Yellow is dangerous because it’s so powerful; it commands attention and exudes confidence. 2) Gold adds power and symbolizes wealth and pedigree. 3) Orange means energy, cutting edge, and gets attention. 4) Blue is trustworthy.
On Goodreads, 146 books with yellow covers and 135 gold-cover books were reviewed.
I checked out the Blackbird Writers bookstore online for covers with gold or orange predominating or used in an attention-getting way for “warmth and confidence and cutting edge”: Five-Alarm Fudge by Christine DeSmet; Amanda Marbais’s Claiming A Body; Death of the Zanjero by Anne Louise Bannon; Saving Myles, by Carl Vonderau; Deep Flakes Christmas by Joy Ann Ribar; The Devil and Daniela Webster by Laurie Stevens; Avanti Centrae’s Cleopatra’s Vendetta; and all of Margaret Mizushima’s series that uses consistent orange lettering.
Color inspires my plots. In Five-Alarm Fudge, a contemporary traditional mystery, characters have funny conflicts over roadside markets with orange pumpkins and peach-colored soap products, but characters also search for a million-dollar, handwritten recipe hidden by a young nun during the real Great Fire of October 1871.
Around 2,000 people died in a five-county area including Door County, Wisconsin the same October day as the Great Chicago Fire, where 300 died. A young nun who survived with fire all around her was considered a miracle. I fictionalized that the hidden divinity fudge recipe in her handwriting could be worth millions, motivating murder and a reason for Ava Oosterling to find both the recipe and the killer.
Did a color inspire a character or plot for you? Do you arrange books on shelves by cover color? What do you think of the 2025 color, “Future Dusk”?
Christine — I read and loved WHEN THE DEAD PEOPLE BROUGHT A DISH-TO-PASS. Here’s my bite-sized review:
“When the Dead People Brought a DISH-TO-PASS by Christine DeSmet is such a delightful story that the face-splitting grin you’ll wear on a flight from Point A to Point B will have the flight attendants thinking you brought your own little bottle(s) on board! This story is a hoot! As are all of the other books I’ve read by this author. Looking for a great feel-good read? This is it!”
Color plays a vital role in book covers, our person, our homes, and our world! (thank you for the mention).
Thank you, Laurie, for that review! I’m so honored that you took the time. You are a busy, busy author with mighty good suspense/thriller books with great covers!
What a fascinating post on colour. I had not given it enough attention. There seems to be so much potential for colour both in terms of storylines and plots, as well as covers. Thanks for getting me thinking!
Yeah, I agree that sometimes I don’t give that color opportunity enough attention. Colors can inspire plots or even just scenes. A dark plot that has some scene in the middle with a character going to a county fair, for example, could let readers get engaged in a new way just because of the contrasting color schemes. I mentioned Laurie Buchanan in my post and she’s a master at working with colors and contrasts in her thrillers.
This is the most fun and creative topic I’ve come across for a while. I learned so much! Thank you, Christine.
Thank you so much for that comment. These posts take research and time. Thank you for your words.
You’re so right, color is important in many ways. It can instantly attract or repel. There’s a fascinating old book called The Luscher Color Test, which allows the reader to pick colors in a pattern and explains what it means to their personality. I would guess that certain readers are attracted to colors on covers, while others would not even consider looking inside the same book. And yet, they don’t know why they feel that way. Good job, Christine.
Thank you, Sheila. Maybe you and I should be characters in a suspense novel. You would analyze handwriting and I would analyze the colors in the perp’s life and the victim’s life. Somehow we’d solve that crime!
You are absolutely right, Christine. Color is important and I gets lots of help. SAVING MYLES has grayish black night with lit-up amber colors for the title and the town depicting Tijuana. I think those colors highlight the dark and light aspects of the thriller.
Thanks, Carl. Good luck with your suspense books!
Wonderful post about the many ways color affects us as humans and readers. That title and cover really drew me in!
Thank you, Avanti. Good covers matter so much. I hope your writing is going well!
I agree, Christine, Colors can be inspirational! And they are evocative, too. I usually wear black and muted colors to blend into the background because colors are so strong and emotionally present. I also hear music in color. Certain chords and especially certain notes are a color to me. For example, a C major chord is bright yellowish green where a C minor chord is more like sage green. But C is always yellow. So yes. sometimes I arrange books by their color. And some colors will never make onto my book cover. LOL!
The green cover for Gathering Mist inspired the plot for me. It came to us as an option for Standing Dead, but didn’t match the dry, beetle-killed forest in book eight. So I saved it for book nine, and it inspired the whole story! I asked for them to keep the green lettering because it was so beautiful, although after reading this post, maybe I should have let them use orange. 🙂 Thanks for your great post, Christine!
I love it that you had that green cover inspiring you!
Fascinating post, Christine! I love your book covers though. I’ve never really thought about organizing books by cover color. I’m going to look at book covers in a whole new way! I love that my book covers are inspired by the seasons the books take place. And I love Margaret’s story about her inspiration for GATHERING MIST! So fun! 🙂
Best wishes for your covers. I love Margaret’s story, too.
I love this post, Christine! Oddly, the color that inspired Death Takes a Bath was the gross murky green of the Grand Roman Bath in Bath, England. But when my publisher sent me covers with that green, it didn’t reflect the tone of the book.
The kitty on the cover caught my eye. “Sold!” I said. Animals on book covers are eye candy for me!