25 Best Fonts for Book Covers for 2024

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the truth is—we all do.

Your book cover is the first thing readers see when they’re shopping around for something new to read. It communicates what the book is all about at a glance and invites them to open it up and get lost inside.

So if you want your book to be a bestseller, it has to look the part. That means making sure the typography is carefully crafted—and for that, you need a good typeface. Fortunately, you’re in the right place to find one.

Below, we’ve listed 25 of the best book cover fonts available. We’ve made sure to include a variety of different styles to suit all genres: romance, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, non-fiction… you name it! 

So no matter your project, you should be able to find something suitable on this list.

What is a Book Cover Font?

A book cover font is a title font that’s incorporated into the design of a book’s front cover. 

There are no hard-and-fast rules as to what constitutes a book cover font. It can be serif or sans-serif, formal or informal, modern or traditional. However, there are three features I’d consider essential:

• It has to be eye-catching
• It should be highly readable
• It should communicate what your book is all about

The latter point is arguably the most important. Some font classifications are better suited to certain types of books than others.

For example, romance novels tend to use cursive or script fonts as they look romantic and help to set the right tone. Sci-fi novels tend to use futuristic fonts for the same kind of reason. 

25 Fonts for Book Covers

Alright, let’s dive into the list. Here are our 25 favorite fonts for book covers.

1. Fonseca Art Deco Font – Our Top Pick

Fonseca is an art deco-inspired sans serif font in all-caps. It comes in 8 weights and includes 345 glyphs, stylistic alternates, and special ligatures.

Why it’s our top pick

The reason Fonseca is our top pick is because of how versatile it is. Its modern style and straight, geometric forms would look great on any book cover, regardless of genre. Plus, in thicker weights, it has a ton of impact and is easily readable even in small book thumbnails.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

2. Detective Book Font

Detective is a retro typewriter font. The letters look as if they’ve been punched into the paper from a classic mechanical typewriter, which gives it an old-fashioned charm. It’s the best font for mystery novels and would work really well on the covers of spy thrillers and detective stories.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

3. Galaxy

Galaxy is the best book cover font for sci-fi novels. Its modular, geometric letterforms and futuristic aesthetic make it the perfect choice for space-themed book covers. The glyphs are weighted on one side which creates a really cool effect. It’s only available in all caps and includes both letters and numerals.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

4. Andro Futuristic

Andro Futuristic is another good option for sci-fi novel covers. We like its modern, minimalist letterforms and elegant curves. Aside from classic sci-fi novels, it might also work well for cyberpunk-themed projects, neo-noir book covers, and even fashion designs.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

5. Storytime Font

Storytime is our favorite children’s book cover font. It’s calm, playful, and homely—perfect for kids. It also looks as if it’s been handwritten by a child, which will help to make young readers feel at home and keep them engaged. The font download includes all the glyphs you need: A-Z, a-z, numbers, and punctuation.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

6. Textbook Charlie

Textbook Charlie is another good children’s book font. Again, the simple letterforms are carefully crafted to mimic children’s handwriting. It’s a little louder and more upbeat than the Storytime font and would work really well in school textbooks, storybook covers, and other design projects aimed at children.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

7. Silent Creek

Silent Creek is the best font for thriller book covers. It uses an old-fashioned vintage design with imperfect ink-bleed edgings that give it an eerie, mysterious edge. Silent Creek makes me think of calm waters that hide dark secrets, and mysterious small villages—the kind of thing that thrillers are all about. 

It comes in two styles: regular and distressed, and includes a bunch of alternates and decorative symbols on top of the standard glyphs. Symbols include ornate arrows, crossed keys, a skull and crossbones, and other decorative graphics that would make a great addition to your thriller book cover.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

8. The Crow

If you’re working on a book cover for a fantasy novel, The Crow might be the font you’re looking for. It’s a vintage, ornamental font with ornate decorative touches, and it’s perfectly suited to the fantasy genre. It reminds me of the font used on the cover of Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. It comes in 8 different styles.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

9. Dune Rise

Dune Rise is a fantastic free font that was inspired by the title text on the Dune movie poster—a film based on the award-winning, best-selling epic science fiction novel. It’s a great choice for sci-fi novels with futuristic themes.

Price: Free for personal & commercial use (see the license for details).

10. Sorrow

Sorrow is our top pick for horror book covers. It has all the hallmarks of a good horror font, with eerie, chaotic letterforms that look as if they’ve been scratched out with a knife. It instantly evokes a sense of fear and sets the tone for a thrilling read.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

11. Bree Serif Font for Book Covers 

Bree Serif is another versatile font that would work well on any kind of book cover. It’s a friendly, charming typeface that’s easygoing and highly readable. There’s not much to it but its simplicity is what makes it so great.

Price: Free for personal & commercial use (see the license for details).

12. Stunegart

Stunegart is the best font for medieval fantasies and gothic book covers. It’s a blackletter font with a design that’s inspired by the saturated calligraphic letters that were common in the Middle Ages.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

13. The Ancient

The Ancient is another good choice for stories set in medieval times, as well as historical novels. It’s highly decorative, with straight lines and sharp edges that call to mind forges, swords, and ancient battles.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

14. Durango Western

Durango Western is the perfect font for Western novels. It’s the kind of font that wouldn’t look out of place on a WANTED poster. If your book is about cowboys, sheriffs, and shootouts, consider it for your book cover.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

15. Bring Romantic

Bring Romantic is our favorite font for romance novel covers. It’s an elegant, handwritten script font with delicate letterforms and elaborate swashes. It comes with a lot of stylistic alternates and ligatures for you to experiment with. 

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

16. Love Letters

Love Letters is another good choice for romance novels. It’s another script font but is a little edgier than the last one we looked at. It doesn’t take itself as seriously which makes it a good choice for lighthearted rom-com book covers.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

17. Thinkerbery

Thinkerbery is the best non-fiction book cover font. It’s a clean, modern serif font that keeps things neat, simple, and professional. It’d work well on textbooks, history books, biographies, self-help books, etc.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

18. Minerva Typeface

Minerva is a tall, Art Deco-inspired typeface that comes in two different weights and would work well on any type of book cover. The geometric design is classy and elegant. It’s also highly readable in small sizes.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

19. Aoki Typeface

Aoki is a sans serif display font with soft and rounded corners. It’s very simple but still has a lot of visual interest and is versatile enough to work well on book covers of any genre. It comes in three styles: regular, light, and inline. 

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

20. Headway Display Font for Book Covers

Headway is another simple sans serif font with a clean and contemporary design. It’d be well-suited to non-fiction book covers but could also work well for covers of any book genre if incorporated tastefully into the design. 

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

21. Andamar Font Family

Adamar is a vintage font duo that comes with two font types: a serif font and a script font. Both fonts come with swashes and a ‘rough’ version. The designer took inspiration from urban artworks to create a truly unique typeface that is sure to make your book cover stand out and get potential readers to take notice.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

22. Liberation Serif Font Family

Liberation is a warm, welcoming serif font family that makes a good alternative to Times New Roman. It’s simple and very readable, which makes it a good choice for book covers of all genres. There are four versions to choose from including regular, italic, bold, and bold italic.

Price: Free for personal & commercial use (see the license for details).

23. Visage Bold Book Cover Font

Visage is another simple but poignant font that’s well-suited to all kinds of book cover designs. It comes in two versions: bold and regular. The bold version is heavily weighted which can help make your title stand out, while the regular version complements it nicely.

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

24. Storystone Serif Font

Storystone is a beautiful, minimalist serif font. It could work well on any book cover but I think it’s particularly well-suited to adventure and travel books. Aside from book covers, it’s also suitable for other designs such as logos, posters, and apparel prints. 

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

25. Monkey&Donkey

Monkey&Donkey is a fun animal-themed font. Its wavy letterforms and unique casual design make it a good choice for absurdist fiction books and children’s book cover designs. 

Price: Personal and commercial use included with Envato Elements subscription ($14.50 per month).

How To Choose the Best Font for Your Book Cover 

That concludes our roundup of the best fonts for book covers! As you can see, there are tons of typefaces out there to choose from—so how do you know which one is the best choice for your book? Here are some factors to bear in mind while you’re weighing up the options:

Readability

If you plan on selling your book online on marketplaces like Amazon, you’ll need to make sure you choose a font that’s readable on the thumbnail image. That way, online shoppers will be able to clearly read the text as they’re browsing. 

Remember that thumbnails are pretty small, so even if a font is easily readable on a full-size cover, it might not be on the thumbnail.

Genre & Target Market

The font you choose should be a good match for your book genre and target market. 

For example, if you’re working on the cover for a non-fiction/academic book, it doesn’t make sense to choose a novelty bubble font. But if you’re writing a light-hearted humorous or absurdist fiction book, this type of font might work really well.

Impact

You only have a couple of seconds to grab your reader’s attention, so it’s important to choose an impactful book cover. It should jump off the page and catch the reader’s eye.

Uniqueness

Ask yourself how you can make your book cover font stand out from other similar books in your niche.

For example, if you’re writing a medieval fantasy fiction novel, and all the other books in that genre use blackletter fonts, you might want to choose a different font style. That way, when readers are browsing that section of the book store or online catalog, yours will stand out from the crowd.

Licensing

If you plan on selling your book, you’ll need to make sure you can use your font in commercial projects. This should be specified in the font license. A lot of free fonts are only free for personal use, not commercial use.

If in doubt, you can’t go wrong with an Envato Elements subscription. All fonts on Envato Elements have straightforward license terms. You get broad commercial rights and can use them in your commercial or personal projects.