When I published the first two books in the After Z-Day series, one of my considerations was how the book covers should look. I wanted to convey the genre of the series (zombie apocalypse) in an immediate and obvious way, but I also didn't want covers that were too scary for someone who isn't a fan of zombies to be afraid to pick them up.
The reason why that's important to me is that there are books I won't read because I'm too scared of the cover. For example, one of upcoming books that I'm seeing a lot of hype for is She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran. Something about the flowers coming out of the woman's mouth creeps me out, and I can't imagine wanting to hold that book or see the cover lying around the house. Other books that I won't read because of scary faces on the cover include Horrid by Katrina Leno and What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo. It's a shame because, based on the descriptions of these books, I might like them.
Even worse for me than creepy faces are insects and spiders. I have an irrational fear of them in real life, so I won't touch a book with them on the cover. This is unfortunate because John Dies at the End by David Wong is a book I really liked, but the second book in the series is called This Book is Full of Spiders with spiders on the cover. There are now four books published in the series, and while I can skip the second book, it's more likely that I won't read beyond book 1.
There are cases when I can tolerate an insect on the cover. For example, the cover of The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid was fine with me. Maybe because I find butterflies to be less scary unless I look too closely at them, or maybe it's because it's not a lifelike picture of a butterfly.
Which brings me back to my first point. I hope my covers for the After Z-Day series aren't too scary for readers. Moreover, the covers of the remaining books in the series will look similar. Hopefully, I manage to convey the genre effectively without scaring off potential readers.
