I was on vacation the first week of July, and totally spaced the quarterly semifinals. So here they are, with some extra time to forget their first impressions on you.

The rules: Pick your choices for the worst three covers for each month.

April:

Happy birthday to the greatest nation in human history.

Possibly because we’ve been doing God’s work here lo these many years, there aren’t as many bad covers out there — or at least, there aren’t as many that, like low-hanging fruit, are as easily collected.  You may have been noticing a growing number of covers from Smashwords; that’s because Smashwords allows me to sort by “most recent,” rather than by any popularity metric, and thus find the bad covers without having to wade through all the stuff that normal people understandably gravitate toward.

That means, however, that I have to spend more and more hours to fill the hopper each week.

So instead of increasing that time allotment, I’m going to go on a more reduced publishing schedule: What I find is what I post. I’ll make sure there’s at least one cover per day, but pickings might be slim after that.

Now I know what the Old West sheriff feels like after he “sure cleans up that town” and has to resort to nabbing jaywalkers to make himself feel useful.

Love the annual Lousies, but dreading Lousy Book Cover Overload in January each year? We’re switching it up! This month, we’ll have semi-finals for the first three months of the year, allowing your psyche to scar over before we periodically tear it up again. You’re welcome!

The rules: Pick your choices for the worst three covers for each month.

March:

Love the annual Lousies, but dreading Lousy Book Cover Overload in January each year? We’re switching it up! This month, we’ll have semi-finals for the first three months of the year, allowing your psyche to scar over before we periodically tear it up again. You’re welcome!

The rules: Pick your choices for the worst three covers for each month.

February: