Cozy Fantasy is a new and popular fast-growing genre. What exactly is a Cozy Fantasy? It is a feel-good sweet mystery but with a traditional fantasy setting, involving places like castles and taverns, and characters like gargoyles and orcs. Think of Lord of the Rings but without the wars and violence, or the Witcher but with an everyday quirky guy and his group of friends as opposed to major history-altering heroes.
In December 2024 the popular statistic-gathering research platform K-lytics published a whole report on the genre, which in itself is proof that it is a major genre at the moment. One of the many charts from their report is this one:
The graph shows how many readers have been searching for these books. You can access their report here: https://k-lytics.com/cozy-fantasy/ (Note: I am not affiliated to them in any way, just sharing a very useful author resource.)
I have also been designing covers for this genre. Two major types of covers are popular: Symbol / Object covers and Characters cover with illustrated characters.
I just released a new premade cover set for this genre. You can find it here:
I will add more covers as I find time (I am usually quite busy with custom designs).
Here is also a banner to compare the covers with other similar ones. It is important for a cover to fit in with a particular genre as readers look for a certain type of cover that signifies the genre they enjoy. Your cover should immediately tell them that your book will provide more of the type of reading material they love. It is hence a challenge to design covers that signify the genre, but that are still different and unique so as to be identified as a special series on their own.
