Kozy Books was a New York-based publishing firm that operated during the late 50s and early 1960s. Using the tagline “Cozy up with Kozy Books,” they specialized in publishing “adult fiction.” A typical Kozy book cover featured an attractive and active woman in the foreground being watched by a passive man in the background. Unfortunately, Kozy Books never credited the artists who painted their covers so if you know who was responsible for the covers below, please let us know in the comments!
Now, cozy up with some Kozy covers!
Through the Shattered Lens 
Since I have some background in the field, here are a few reasons why the cover art was rarely signed by the artist.
First of all, the publishers usually required that the art be unsigned. This was standard since it wasn’t considered to be “art” per se, but rather “illustration.” There’s always a fine line between graphic art, created for art’s sake, and commercial art, created to sell a product. While some commercial illustration, such as Norman Rockwell’s magazine covers, was considered by many to be “fine art”, Rockwell himself insisted that he was only doing illustrations. It’s a very touchy and still hotly debated subject,
Besides that, the type of illustrations on the Kozy books were often done by established artists who would take the low-paid cover art work to pay the bills. As Rauschenberg’s quote goes; “rent is the only reality.” In those cases, there was no way the artist wanted their name on the art. The same applied to almost all the authors, who used pseudonyms.
With all that in mind, it’s great that you men and women are taking the effort to publish these covers. Maybe someone with a lot of time on their hands might do the research required to discover just who the artists actually are.
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