When you’re a part of the writing community on social media, you see a lot of covers. Book promotion companies share titles, as do authors. For many of these, you see the same covers over and over again. There are covers that catch your eye and make you want to read the book. They’re intriguing and they draw you in. There are also covers that catch your eye for other reasons, often because of the fonts.
The best way to know what fonts are good for your cover is to look at books in your genre. It becomes very clear once you begin looking what fonts are right for your cover. Good fonts make a cover. Bad fonts turn off readers.
Just because a font appears genre specific doesn’t mean that it will work. Many fonts look like they could be for the genre, for example western or military/thriller fonts, but they detract from the cover image and message. A good font, and good font work, will enhance the cover–not detract from the images.
Your fonts should be readable, even at thumbnail size. I see this a lot with the script fonts popular on romance covers. If you can’t tell if a letter is an a or an o, then your readers won’t be able to either. Just because a font is popular, doesn’t mean it’s good.
Take some time when considering fonts for your cover. And make sure you talk to your cover designers as well. If you see them using the same font on all their covers, ask them why. You want your book to stand out in a good way, not appear like one of the same.