So apparently this is the week for cover art kerfuffles. We start with my own publisher DAW, who put out the anthology The Dragon and the Stars. This is an anthology of “18 original stories melding the rich cultural heritage of China with the imaginative realms of science fiction and fantasy.”
In DAW’s defense, I believe the budget for their monthly anthologies is significantly smaller than for original novels, which I suspect is why they tend to go with stock art for the former. And artistically, I like the look of this one. I just wish they’d gone with stock art that showed a Chinese dragon instead of a western one.
Cover number two comes from Bloomsbury, who you might remember as the publisher that whitewashed the cover for Justine Larbalestier’s book Liar. After much outcry from author and fans, Larbalestier’s cover was changed. Now Bloomsbury brings us Magic Under Glass. To quote the Book Smugglers review:
“Nimira is supposed to be dark-skinned! The book trailer captures that and is true to the book (check it out here) but the girl in the US covers is definitely white.”
It’s deja vu all over again.
Last but most certainly not least, oldcharliebrown points out the Baen covers from the Flandry books by Poul Anderson. Young Flandry came out last month. The cover for the forthcoming Captain Flandry is similar, aiming for that same demographic of young boys who for whatever reason can’t get real porn online.
I know many publishers have multiple imprints, but when did Baen launch their “Orgies in Space” line? I’m all for not judging a book by its cover, but even as a teenaged boy I don’t think I could have brought this one into the house. As a grownup wanting to introduce my daughter to SF/F, I’m embarrassed for my genre.
Click on any of the thumbnails for larger versions.
Please keep in mind that authors have little to no control over their cover art. Larbalestier was able to push for new artwork for her book, but she’s a fairly high-clout author and was able to rally reader/fan support. Generally, the author has little input into the cover.
So, what do you think?
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
My Books
Page Summary
asakiyume : (no subject) [+11] - janni : (no subject) [+3]
- suricattus : once again, I am thankful for my covers, even when they're inaccurate... [+5]
- snapes_angel : (no subject) [+0]
- jagyr_ebonwood : (no subject) [+3]
- mtlawson : (no subject) [+0]
- arielstarshadow : (no subject) [+1]
- sixteenbynine : (no subject) [+4]
- dulcinbradbury : (no subject) [+1]
- tithenai : (no subject) [+2]
- shanrina : (no subject) [+1]
- zornhau : Baen's "Orgies in Space" line... [+4]
- redfishie : (no subject) [+0]
- corinneduyvis : (no subject) [+2]
- ethereal_lad : (no subject) [+0]
- biomekanic : (no subject) [+0]
- machineiv : (no subject) [+2]
- celestineangel : (no subject) [+0]
- theguindo : (no subject) [+8]
- comrade_cat : (no subject) [+0]
- bodlon : (no subject) [+4]
- stillnotbored : (no subject) [+3]
- semiramis : (no subject) [+3]
- oneminutemonkey : (no subject) [+1]
- sylvia_rachel : (no subject) [+3]
Comments
The Magic Under Glass cover is infuriating, especially in the light of their already having had one mess-up with Liar Liar and apparently not having learned.
Since authors don't have much, if any, control over the covers, I think it's up to the reading public to complain. I'm all for doing what
The Young Flandry cover is just ridiculous.
I don't get how Bloomsbury could repeat the exact same thing after the mess they got from Liar, Liar. (Unless that outcry actually gave the book a publicity boost ... or is that too cynical of me?)
I really wonder what folks were thinking on the Flandry covers.
If she was the one who'd pressured her publisher into changing the cover, the whitewashed version never would have made it as far as it did -- that was the version in the catalog, in the teasers in her book before that, and so on.
DAW screwed up. I love them, but they screwed up. So damn easy to find stock art of Asian dragons, equally glorious and recognizable.
Bloomsbury... clearly, they have an Agenda. Or a terminal case of the Stupids.
Seconded!
I missed your Flandry rant. Was that on your LJ or elsewhere?
Re: DAW, they're my publisher and I love them, so I'm not objective. They do a short fiction anthology every month, more than any other publisher out there. These get smaller budgets, and I wonder if they sometimes get pushed out with less attentive care. Not excusing it, but I appreciate their efforts to support short fiction, and I can understand how this sort of thing would slip past.
Bloomsbury? Yeah. Not cool.
But the content.... Skip the teenagers, looks like they're shooting for the mid-life crisis crowd.
#2 - as I said yesterday... OMGWTF is this, I don't even
#3 - you know, I suspect that there will ALWAYS be those kinds of covers in SF/F. They've been around forever.
This cover is a bit different, like Bond does R/NC-17.
http://www.genjipress.com/2010/01/cring
2. That one is too NICE to have not been more deliberate than the others, which takes it beyond disappointing and into insulting.
3. ... I never thought I'd be looking to James Bond as a step UP in appropriate images.
If nothing else, this cover has led to all sorts of entertaining snark :-)
I read the summary of the second one and it actually sounds like a lot of fun. So now I'm torn on whether to buy it (I still have a gift card left over from a Holiday Present--yay!) or to wait and see if they change the cover. I don't want to punish the author, especially because according to Amazon this is her first book (and I do know that authors, especially first-time authors, have very little control over their cover art), but...argh.
I think the Anderson covers would bother me more if scantily-clad women weren't already so common on sff covers. The Young Flandry one is a little more extreme than most of them, but at this point it feels like all I can do is try to think of stories that would require men in whatever the fantasy equivalent of a Speedo is on the cover.
Seriously, though, it always used to bug me when books did NOT live up to their covers: all those Frazetta Flesh and Thew Fests wrapped around drab little tales of angsty ploughboys.
I could also see that it was a poor attempt at a rather lighter skinned dark skinned person rather than a Caucasian (wow did that not parse well). Still it did not come out as the author envisioned.
I just... *boggle*
(That was sarcasm).
Seriously?
I mean really, seriously?
But no. Of course not.
Also Flandry looks sleazy without a shave.
Bloomsbury, though, I'd have expected to be more careful. They invested in proper art -- which is not cheap -- and they've run afoul of this problem already. In YA. In the last year. It's awful, and dreadfully unfair to the author, and angrymaking because now it's looking like a pattern of overt whitewashing, and because people don't realize that authors don't have control over their covers, I feel awful for Jaclyn Dolamore.
As for Baen, I have to wonder. Did someone look at Captain "I'm a Black-Clad Badass!" Flandry (and his, er, pistol) and decide, "This guy isn't virile enough. Let's throw in some naked chicks," or is there a chapter in which Captain "No Really, Check Out My Pistol" Flandry is surrounded under-dressed courtesans during a very serious-looking mission? I swear, it's all I can do not to shout "BOOBS! IN! SPACE!" right now.
Well, you must admit it is a VERY Baen-y cover. I avoided the Vorkosigan series for nearly two decades largely (and I'm not proud of this, but it's true) because I couldn't imagine that I could possibly enjoy reading the kind of book that, for example, The Warrior's Apprentice appears to be. I don't think I've ever seen a Baen Bujold cover that looked like it had words inside that I would like -- yet Bujold is now one of my very favourite authors.
The second one is just depressing :/
As for Baen... I got nothin'.
2. ::headdesk:: Bloomsbury apparently does not learn from experience. At all.
3. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It's The Warrior's Apprentice on a ton of steroids! Wow, that kind of tasteful, understated cover art just never gets old. [/sarcasm]
When I was a kid, cover art and illustrations that didn't match the text used to drive me completely crazy. And I was a detail-oriented kid, so the mismatches could be pretty minor and still cheese me off. I understood even then that authors are almost never responsible for cover or interior art, but it mystified and enraged me that the artists couldn't be bothered to read the book. (Or at least enough of it to know what colour the protagonist's hair is, how many arms, that kind of thing.)
I'm a grown-up now, and I work in publishing (though not fiction -- cover design is profoundly unexciting where I work), and I get that if artists had to read all the way through every book they illustrate they'd never get any illustrating done, and that art departments have budgets, and that my taste is not everyone's taste, and so on. But I still shake my head about this kind of stuff. Seriously, you thought it would be a good idea to put a white girl on the cover of a book about a black girl? Really? Can I ask what you were smoking at the time?
Edited at 2010-01-20 07:30 pm (UTC)
Re: the white girl, people won't buy books unless there's a white person on the cover, right? Everybody knows that. [/sarcasm]