Colour expectations of fiction genre book covers

Abstract

This research identified the colours people expected to find on the covers of three fiction genres: Romance, Science Fiction, and Mystery/Thriller. A survey of 180 participants assessed their colour expectations. The results confirmed a number of popularly-held colour-genre associations, while also highlighting some unexpected associations. The colours nominated most often for Romance covers were in the red to pink range leaning towards purple; these colours were inversely related to the colours most often chosen for the Science Fiction covers. The colours nominated for Science Fiction and Mystery/Thriller covers were very similar: black, white, greys and dark blue. Significantly, the nominator's gender appears to have no bearing on the colours nominated for each genre. Additionally, there was no link between whether the nominator read the genre or not.