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I find book spines to be much more difficult to critique than the book faceout. It’s harder to define elements that attract, when space is so limited and so much has to fit.
So what elements can we consider here? I can identify a few.
1) Background color – looking at shelves of books in my library, I found that color was a great attractor. But there’s a trick that cannot be controlled by the designer: it matters what other books surround. I saw hot pink books that jumped right out at me – and hot pink books that disappeared in a crowd of other brightly colored spines. Metallic stands out – but only if there are not too many metallic inks nearby.
2) Fonts, their color and orientation – If the title is horizontal, the font may have to be smaller and more compact (unless it’s a very short title, or a very thick book).  I would have said the only other choice is vertical, usually running from top to bottom. But (see bottom photo) this past weekend I was visiting my father, an avid reader. There was a stack of books near his TV that kept drawing my eye over and over. Eventually it occurred to me that the reason why was because one of them had a feature I’d never seen on a book spine before – a diagonal title. Very difficult to do – but this works!
3) Graphic elements – A photo, a drawing, a design, lines – just something in addition to the author and title text that is there to assist in drawing attention to the book.
4) Multiples – I don’t know how else to say it. Multiple copies of a title on the shelf just catches my eye. I can’t explain it. Along with that, however, is the series effect. Series books will differ from book to book, but there’s a format that helps it to have that repeating effect.

With these defined elements in mind, I snapped a few pictures of spines that I thought succeeded in jumping out and saying “look at me!”
The McKay books above, Forever Rose, Indigo’s Star and Permanent Rose have an element that works every time for me. There’s something about a face (or just an eye) looking out from a spine. I can’t ignore it in a sea of letters and words.
The Crossley-Holland books really have that series effect, and the drawings almost do the eye/face thing.
I include Godless because the starring effect around the title, combined with the fact that there were four of them on the shelf… worked like a marquee.

The Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage has a lot to work with because the books are so fat! But the designer did a lot with the faux old book look, foiled fonts, graphic elements and standout background colors. Love these!
And below, my father’s pile of books. I just love the diagonal look here. It’s so different and the slant is bound to attract any shelf-browsing eye. I have not seen any YA books that do this (hint, hint).

Whoa, life intervenes and sometimes it’s hard to get a post together. In the meantime, check out this interview with Coralie Bickford-Smith, book designer for Penguin books (not YA, but still…).
What was especially interesting in this post were the pictures of the book spines. There are 2 – one at the top of the post, and a better one way down toward the bottom.
What strikes me about this – something that never occurred to me before – is that what makes them so appealing is how they play against one another. But in real life, in the library and perhaps the bookstore, standard order dictates how your spines go together.

A challenge for you! Look at your shelves with a critical eye toward spines. Send me a photo of a particularly pleasing serendipitous collection of spines. I’ll display them here with your commentary and/or mine.

Crime tape seems to me like a perfect graphic image, and it’s surprising that  it’s not used more often.  The book covers below are the only ones I could track down, and three of the first four are from Simon & Schuster. Usually when I’ve put together a group like this, I find that all are from different publishers. So this is an unsual grouping on that count.
Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser (Simon & Schuster 2000) and Shooter by Walter Dean Myers (Amistad 2004) are similar in the orientation of the crime tape and the colors used. With these two, the crime tape says what crime tape usually says, and the title is separate. Both used red to make the title stand out.

The Year of the Bomb by Ronald Kidd and Just Another Hero by Sharon M. Draper are both new this year and both from Simon & Schuster. These differ from the above two in that the title text is what appears on the tape.
People have talked about great book spines, and I’ve included the spines here, because they are really striking. I’ve had these two books sitting on a cart of books in my office, and my eye is drawn to them over and over again.

Three of the above are about guns brought to school. The image makes sense for the subject.
I just have to add a peak at this adult title, The Years of Talking Dangerously by Geoffrey Nunberg (PublicAffairs 2009). Unlike the titles above, this is about language, not crime.

Give a Boy a Gun: Events leading up to a night of terror at a high school dance are told from the point of view of various people involved. Ages . Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4.
Shooter: Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting. Ages . Reviews 1, 2, 3,
Year of the Bomb: In 1955 California, as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is filmed in their hometown, thirteen-year-old Arnie discovers a real enemy when he and three friends go against a young government agent determined to find communists at a neaby university or on the movie set. Jacket design by Lucy Ruth Cummins. Jacket illustrations by Matthew Laznicka. Ages 12+.
Just Another Hero: As Kofi, Arielle, Dana, November, and Jericho face personal challenges during their last year of high school, a misunderstood student brings a gun to class and demands to be taken seriously. Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian. Jacket photographs by Getty Images. Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2.
Years of Talking Dangerously: Adult. Reviews 1, 2.

After looking at hundreds of 2008 children’s and YA fiction book covers, I’ve narrowed it down to my ten favorites. Here are the first three, in no particular order.

Each time I saw the cover of Triskellion by Will Peterson [Mark Billingham & Peter Cocks] (Candlewick) this year, it caught my attention and intrigued me.

The white-gold bee silhouettes are beautiful by themselves (I’m a sucker for insect shapes). They stand out against the black and red background, circling and drawn to a light focused nicely in the “O” of the title. The off-center triangle and surrounding red dashed lines, the trillium shape, and the perfectly selected font… Each adds to the whole. Candlewick doesn’t credit the designer, on the flap, but they should!