Book Cover Alt Text: 12 Real Examples Compared
By AutoBoost Team · 2026-10-29 · 6 min read
Faber's book covers carry the alt text Gilgamesh.jpg and 9780571169344, a file name and an ISBN, and they were not alone. On 29 October 2026 we fetched the home pages of 60 publisher, bookshop, review and author sites and read the HTML of each one. 22 blocked us or sent back an empty page, and several more had no book covers on the page. That left 12 covers from 10 sites that we could quote exactly. Every alt text below is copied from the page source as it was served that day.
Key takeaways
- 5 of the 12 covers had a fault, and 4 of those 5 put a number or a file name in the alt text.
- Of the 11 covers that had alt text, 10 included the book's title, and 6 also named the author. The one without a title was an ISBN.
- The longest alt text was 104 characters. The two good ones were 0 and 32, and the five "fine" ones sat between 23 and 53.
- An empty alt can be right. Wordery leaves it empty because the title is written as text inside the same link.
Twelve covers, as served
| Site | Alt text | Characters | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Penguin | Book cover of Good Mood Food by Tim Spector | 43 | Fine. Title and author, but "Book cover of" adds nothing. |
| Penguin | The Correspondent cover | 23 | Fine. Title only, no author, with a spare "cover". |
| Gollancz | Frankenstein Rex by Adam Roberts | 32 | Good. Title and author, nothing else. |
| Wordery | empty | 0 | Good. The title "Cook and Share" is written as text inside the same link, so nothing is lost. |
| Pushkin Press | The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo | Pushkin Press | 53 | Fine. Title and author, then the publisher name added to every cover. |
| Pan Macmillan | Book cover for Dead in Three Two One | 36 | Fine. Title only, with "Book cover for" in front. |
| Puffin | Book cover of Elfie's Spellbook Volume 3: The Gingerbread Disaster by Christophe Arleston, Audrey Alwett | 104 | Fault: too long. Two authors and a subtitle push it past 100 characters. |
| Faber | Gilgamesh.jpg | 13 | Fault: file name. |
| Faber | 9780571169344 | 13 | Fault: ISBN only, no title. |
| HarperCollins UK | The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson (9780008764555) HarperCollins UK | 62 | Fault: ISBN and publisher name added to a good title and author. |
| Adventure Books | Puffins by Kevin Morgans cover image 9781913207779 | 50 | Fault: says "cover image" and ends with an ISBN. |
| Stephen King | Other Worlds Than These Art | 27 | Fine. Gives the title but not the author, and "Art" means nothing to a listener. |
Each link goes to the exact page we fetched. The Adventure Books row comes from its Sandstone Press collection page, which is where sandstonepress.com sent us.
Identify the book once
The two good examples are very different, but the rule behind them is the same: the book is named once, and nothing is repeated.
- They name the title. 10 of the 11 covers with alt text included it. The exception was Faber's ISBN, and
Gilgamesh.jpgonly has the title by accident. Gollancz and Wordery show what is enough, because a reader who cannot see the jacket still knows which book this is. - They add the author when the page does not. Gollancz writes "Frankenstein Rex by Adam Roberts". Wordery leaves the alt empty because the author sits right under the cover as text.
- They do not describe the artwork. None of the 12 said what is drawn on the jacket. That is the right call for a listing page, since the title and author are the information. If the cover itself is the point of the page, such as a post about cover design, describe the design in the post text.
If the title is already written as text in the same link, use an empty alt, as Wordery does. Do not leave the attribute off. An empty alt is a decision, and a missing alt is a gap.
ISBNs, file names and an overlong subtitle
Counted from the table, 5 of 12 covers had a fault.
| Fault | Covers | Where |
|---|---|---|
| ISBN or number in the alt text | 3 | Faber, HarperCollins UK, Adventure Books |
| File name | 1 | Faber |
| Too long | 1 | Puffin |
The ISBN fault is the one to watch for with books. A bookshop feed already holds the ISBN, so it is easy for a template to put it in the alt text. A screen reader reads out thirteen digits one by one. Two of the three also added filler: HarperCollins added the publisher name and Adventure Books added "cover image".
Other things the good ones leave out:
- The publisher name. Pushkin and HarperCollins add theirs to every cover, so the reader hears it again and again down a list.
- "Book cover of" and "cover image". Penguin, Pan Macmillan and Puffin start the same way. That is three words, repeated on every item in a grid.
- The file name.
Gilgamesh.jpgis what a content system fills in when nobody edits the field.
Filler that did not count as a fault in our table was still common. 5 of the 12 had a spare phrase: "Book cover of" or "Book cover for" on three, a trailing "cover" on one, and a trailing "Art" on one. None of this breaks anything, but it makes every item in a grid of covers sound the same.
How much of a title and author fits
Our numbers for the 11 covers that had text: the shortest were the two faults at 13 characters, short because they held no title at all. The five covers marked fine ran from 23 to 53 characters, with a middle value of 36. The good one with text was 32 characters. The three longest were all faults, at 50, 62 and 104 characters.
A title and an author fit in 30 to 55 characters for most books. Go past 60 and you are usually adding an ISBN, a publisher or a subtitle. Puffin shows the other limit: with a long subtitle and two authors, the title and author names alone reach 104 characters. When that happens, drop the subtitle and keep the title and the first author.
Tip: strip the ISBN out of the template
On a book blog, author site or small press, covers uploaded straight from a camera or a publisher's file often get the file name as alt text. The rule in short is the title, the author if the page does not already show it, and nothing else. Read each draft against that rule. Listings of other goods have the same needs, as our guides to product image alt text and food and menu photo alt text explain, and the main bulk alt text guide walks through the whole job.
The free AutoBoost SEO plugin connects WordPress to the AutoBoost SEO app. The app writes missing alt text for the images in your posts in bulk, you approve each cover, and the text saves to the post and to the media library.