Cover Matters is a new monthly feature in which we examine the medium that is first contact between a reader and a book: the cover. This feature will dedicate more separate space to a topic that has always intrigued, irked, and befuddled us. We will be talking about issues such as whitewashing practices, covers in poor taste, misleading or completely inaccurate covers, clichéd covers and, of course, covers that manage to get it right. We plan on having guests (bloggers, authors, cover artists, and publishers if possible) join us for these monthly pieces, with the following question in mind: Do covers matter?
In this second issue of our Cover Matters feature, we will be talking about Clichéd Covers in Fantasy. Inspired by Aidan Moher (a blogger whose take on Fantasy covers are infamous for their keen assessment and criticism) and his post “I ask you: Clichés – A Double Standard” over at A Dribble of Ink, we will be addressing some of the questions he asked (Why are clichés shunned in the text of novels, but often embraced on the cover? Should publishers look for the same originality in their art departments that they seek in their authors?), as well as examining examples of both clichéd and original covers. We will discuss the rationale behind creating clichéd covers, and the idea of consumer familiarity. And finally, later in the day, we will have a guest article from Aidan himself.
Introduction: The Problem of Clichéd Covers
Aidan Moher from A Dribble of Ink is a prolific Fantasy blogger that consistently posts about and critically examines cover art. In one of his recent articles (the one that inspired this issue of Cover Matters ), he examines the irony of covers in fantasy – as publishers and agents are constantly on the lookout for fresh and original novels, and yet once these groundbreaking new tales are published, they invariably end up with a ridiculously bland, clichéd cover.
He proceeds to ask the questions: Why are clichés shunned in the text of novels, but often embraced on the cover? Should publishers look for the same originality in their art departments that they seek in their authors?
The ensuing discussion included opinions from readers and authors alike (including Mark Charan Newton and Peter V. Brett) , and this all points to a diverse melange of opinions and reasonings: one must take into consideration budget, marketing, the fact that the cover has a specific purpose (i.e. that of selling the book).
In 2009, Orbit – one of the major Fantasy publishers in the UK – conducted a survey examining cover art for Fantasy novels published in 2008 by all the big publishers in the genre. As you can see, the results point to a staggering over-use of certain elements: see the prevalence of “swords” and “glowing magic.”
Or, in a more visual approach, behold – examples:
EXHIBIT 1: The Sword
EXHIBIT 2: The Hood (even though not part of the survey, the hood seems to be an up-and-coming favorite)
EXHIBIT 3: The Hooded Figure PLUS The Sword
The evidence does seem to point towards a certain sense of… homogeneity. What exactly does this trend mean?
Familiarity versus Originality: The Debate
To the causal consumer (the silent mass that, despite what we internet dwellers may think, comprises the majority of readers), covers are often the strongest, most influential selling point for a book. In this sense, the commercial aspect of covers must be taken into consideration by publishers, since covers are a reader’s first introduction to a book. While the back summary, author blurbs, reviews, and general popularity DO matter, the cover is the first impression a book makes with a potential consumer. As such, covers must DRAW a customer in; they must give detailed hints about the style, genre and subject matter of the book.
This is where “familiarity” comes into play – because the casual consumer is more likely to pick up a book based on the cover (as opposed to us angry internetz peepul that read reviews, spark up impassioned arguments with other internet-cave-dwellers, stalk authors, and hound publishers for review copies), the marketing strategy often is boiled down to the following:
Make (NEW BOOK) cover look like (SUPREMELY SUCCESSFUL OLDER BOOK) cover
This is not only backed by the examples shown above, but also by Mark Charan Newton, who, in the aftermath of Aidan’s post wrote an article of his own, entitled Book Cover Conversations are so Very Cliched.In this article, MCN voices his opinion not only as an author of Fantasy novels but also based on his past experience as bookseller and as an industry professional (editor). He agrees that covers are “the single most important decision in selling books,” and proceeds to give his writerly/publisher point of view – namely that artists, book marketers, authors need to eat and familiarity sells. Hence, Mr. Newton puts a whole lot more emphasis on the marketing and commercial aspect of the fantasy book cover. (His post also hosts interesting comments from readers, bloggers and authors and it is well worth a read.)
This argument makes two key assumptions. One is explicit:
People buy what they know they already like – clichéd covers sell;
But this argument also makes a much more interesting IMPLICIT assumption:
PEOPLE WILL NOT BUY WHAT IS DIFFERENT – original covers do not sell
It is this second point that is far more interesting to us – because, as MCN implies in his post publishing/marketing professionals “won’t be able to eat” if the decision is made to put up covers that don’t feature a hooded figure, or a sword, or glowy magic, or whatever.
To us, this seems to be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Clichéd covers are supposed to work because they engender a sense of familiarity with readers; because some prior cover was successful, this very similar new cover will also be successful. But isn’t it possible that the majority of these repetitive covers are successful because they comprise the majority of the market? What other choice does the buyer truly have?
We are not industry professionals. Nor can we back our opinion with sales numbers (since we don’t have the thousands of dollars required to access Nielsen data). BUT, we feel that there is tangible evidence that runs contrary to these two assumptions. First, we assert that:
People DO buy different covers!
Macmillan’s (one of the “Big Six” publishing houses in the US) “Top Sellers” at this precise moment for SF/F contain a number of titles with distinct, original covers:
Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books with their gorgeous US covers designed by artist Dan dos Santos are immensely successful New York Times, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble Best Sellers (and yes, we’ve been trying to keep Urban Fantasy out of the discussion as that is fodder for an entirely different post, but we thought it was worth a mention)
At this moment in the top 50 SF/F Hardcover Bestsellers at B&N:
Granted, we don’t have the actual sales figures for any of these titles above. But provided that Macmillan, Amazon, B&N, et al are not pulling a fast one on us and lying about which titles are selling the best, there seems to be at least enough soft, third-party evidence that points to the contrary of this idea that originality is a death sentence for a fantasy title.
We’d also like to emphasize the main problem we have with this multitude of bland sea of homogeneity in terms of covers: these covers make the books inside indistinguishable from one another. They are nondescript and look like “just another Fantasy novel” without any zest or originality whatsoever. Doesn’t familiarity breed exhaustion?
Plus, no one seems to be asking the question that matters most to us:
WHAT ABOUT THE CONSUMER?
At the end of the day, we understand that sales matter, and that artists and publicists and authors, etc have to eat. But this argument seems to forget that there are two sides to this relationship. Isn’t the reader’s money just as important as the publisher’s/author’s/artist’s? Doesn’t the publisher have an obligation to provide the reader with his money’s worth? Is it really ok for publishers to put out a slew of mediocre (ranging from bland to utterly hideous) cover art, so long as it sells? The reader also has to spent his hard-earned money and wouldn’t a better cover, a more artistic cover, or a cover that fits the book a little more closely be a better investment?
Other Problems with Cover Clichés
Another argument we’ve seen for homogeneous covers is the “Cost Defense.” There just isn’t really that much money available to publishers to put together lavish photoshoots or commission top artists to create something entirely original for every book. To this, we draw on a point Aidan has made before us – significantly smaller publishers such as Pyr and Night Shade Books, or imprints like Angry Robot are able to come up with drop-dead AWESOME covers for their titles – and we have to imagine that budgets for these smaller publishers are much lower than for the behemoths of the Fantasy landscape.
Is the true deciding factor that huge fantasy publishers (such as Tor/Forge, Bantam, Del Rey, and Ace) do not have the money to spend on their cover art? Or, rather, is their strategy “domination by inundation” – that is pumping out as many of the same looking books as possible?
We agree with the basic precept that a Fantasy cover should necessarily signify consumers that it is a Fantasy novel – but there are better ways of accomplishing that without being stale and repetitious. There are effective ways to integrate familiarity with originality – just take a look at Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings:
Nostalgic, but gorgeously rendered at the same time, The Way of Kings speaks to old and new fantasy readers alike.
Another question we find ourselves facing as we explore clichéd covers in fantasy and the arguments on both sides is the actual role that covers play in the complete package that is a published book. Covers are indeed a commercial entity, a marketing tool, intended to pique a customer’s interest – but it’s also a representation of the book, and, at its most basic level, a work of art. Art – meant to intrigue, to entertain, to provoke, to convey a message. A book itself is a tactile object and a work of art in itself. Books represent the dispersion of knowledge, the written enthrallment of storytelling – they are not just commodities meant to be sold.
Really Awesome Cover Art In Fantasy
There are a number of truly original, awesome covers out on the market today, and we’d like to share some of these with you, dear readers. N.K. Jemison’s breakout 2010 debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has a gorgeous, unique cover, and the Australian covers for Celine Kiernan’s Moorehawk trilogy are another example of big titles with lovely covers that sell. J.G. Lamplighter’s Prospero Lost is another striking one worth a mention:
Then, there are the amazing French covers for Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy, and Fiona McIntosh’s Valisar trilogy (both courtesy of Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews):
Then, there’s this amazing article from SciFiMeld, featuring artists and authors talking about covers that they think just work brilliantly.
CONCLUSION
We understand that covers are a marketing tool and serve a very important purpose as the commercial representation for a book. Yet, we think that clearly, covers can be both artistic and commercially potent – one does not preclude the other.
Make sure to stick around as later today, we give the floor to Aidan, from A Dribble of Ink. Since he’s the guy that got us talking about the problem of clichéd covers in fantasy novels, we decided to pose the question to Aidan: Do Covers Matter?
Covers Matter
So, Ana and Thea want me to talk about cliches in cover art. That’s great. It’s something I’ve talked about before, and have a particular interest in. I was all ready to go on about self-fulfilling prophecies and publishing companies relying on flash-in-the-pan marketing trends (like those listed my my wonderful hosts) and shitty but familiar art (I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me that the art on The Gathering Storm isn’t of objectively poor quality) over wonderfully creative and interesting covers… but then I ran into this quote by artist John Picacio on twitter:
“The vectors of commercial success & content integrity for book covers can intersect if the right artist is allowed to work.”
And, well… that basically sums up my thoughts about the matter. Diehard fans of the genre (like those passionate enough to blog, or wile away the day reading blogs) see so many book covers that they’re always pining for something new and exciting. Book Publishers (and, just as importantly, Book Sellers in major bookstore chains) want something that is going to immediately present itself as familiar and comfortable to their customers. No matter how long a marketing department spends on a project, if it looks like it was slapped together to please everyone (like the US Hardback cover of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold), it’s going to fail as art; similarly, you could put the most amazing piece of art on a cover, but if it doesn’t resonate with the target audience, it fails as a marketing device. The key, however, lies in taking those familiar elements and teaming them up with an artist who has creative license.
My hope, for any cover, is that it can succeed both as a lovely piece of art, and a powerful tool to get the book into the hands of readers. It’s just that that tricky middle-ground can be very hard to hit.
Trends and familiarity need not be mutually exclusive with striking art. One need look no further than Pyr Books, who take familiar ideas (like Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Son) and pair them up with amazing artists. If more publishers took this approach, I like to think we’d see happier fans and a lot more pretty books on our bookshelves.
But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a blogger.
Thanks, Aidan!
Links for Further Reading:
The Book Design Review (Unfortunately, on indefinite hiatus – but still worth looking through the archives)
Lit Mob’s Weekly “Judging By The Cover” Feature provides analysis of covers, interviews with artists, and other opinion pieces
Book By Its Cover – an aesthetically appealing site that (though light on actual commentary) takes a look at children’s book art and comic book art
Total Cardboard’s Retro Book Cover Design Gallery, featuring beauties from classic SF/F/H and pulp novels
Judge A Book…By Its Cover – another awesome collection of covers of the SF/H/pulp variety
Cracked.com’s “Best (and Worst) Fantasy & Science Fiction Book Covers”
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81 Responses to Cover Matters: On Clichéd Covers in Fantasy
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As much as I love that cover to Inferno I can’t imagine why you’d consider that an example of a cover that avoids what you’ve been referring to as cliches. The prominently featured skull is one of the most common tropes in horror covers (also love the book–I’ve read it twice). And it’s a good illustration of my point: originality and quality don’t consist in avoiding widely-used tropes.
Dear Akin – I’ve tried to keep the debate polite, and I’ve a thick skin compared to some, but a bitter tone like yours is what keeps authors from engaging in online debates, so consider me walking away from this one. Believe what you have to believe, I just tried to highlight how the industry thinks on its inside.
PS – the black / white thing? That’s nothing to do with sales – I think people realised that it was racism.
You guys -really- should have mentioned Sanderson’s Mistborn hardcovers.
@ David Ellis: those are blatant cliches. You put that crap out and I guarantee critics and bloggers will eat you alive.
The thing you need to understand is cliches will never die. Harry Potter, wands and wizards – cliche. The Hunger Games, reality tv with blood and guts – not cliche but becoming cliche.
The trick is to put a nice, original spin to these cliches. Make them interesting. Make people say, “Oh, wow, that wizard’s really cool,” or “Hey, I never thought vampires could do that.”
Same goes with covers. You can’t completely eradict wizards and glowing staffs and swords and what not. But try and put a nice spin to them. I swear, most of these covers actually look like they came from one comic book, only one book had page 1 of the comic book as it’s cover and the other book had page 3 of the comic book as its cover.
I mentioned this with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The elements on the cover are in no way original. But they’re used to create something that looks different and beautiful and visually arresting. THAT is the point the book smugglers are making.
Hell, you know what, carry out a survey or something. Go out on the street and ask a bunch of people who don’t read fantasy books – show them Paul Hoffman’s “the left hand of god” and N.K Jemisin’s “The hundred thousand kingdoms”, ask them which book they’re likely to pick, and I guarantee they’ll pick Jemisin’s. They’ll also add, on Paul Hoffman’s book, “This shit is ugly.”
Dear Mark, the black and white thing ALWAYS had something to do with sales. Publishers want to sell books. They will do anything to sell books. The reason publishers are publishing books that sound like Twilight isn’t because they want to publish good books – it’s because they want to sell books.
The reason they whitewashed was both racism AND because they wanted to sell books. They believed (a) more white people read books than black people (b) white readers don’t want to see black people on covers. Hence whitewashing. But let’s not go into that. Today, it’s all about boring fantasy covers.
As for my tone, forgive me if I sounded harsh. It wasn’t my intent. If anything, my anger is directed mostly at publishers. They’re the ones who make the decisions in the end. I’m pretty sure most writers, if given the chance to work with cover artist, would probably come up with interesting covers. Publishers like to feel like they know everything readers want; they consider pretty much every other person’s opinion as baseless. That’s why they keep getting sucker punched with stuff like ebooks and whitewashing.
Really, like, did you not see ebooks garnering more supporting, especially in this digital age?? Everyone saw it. The music industry saw it. The movie industry saw it. Book readers saw it. Bloggers saw it. Publishers didn’t. And they were confident about it.
Again, sorry if I sounded harsh. I wasn’t directing my harshness at you
Same goes with covers. You can’t completely eradict wizards and glowing staffs and swords and what not. But try and put a nice spin to them.
Isn’t that I said (except that I wouldn’t include that suggest that we ought to want to eradicate wizards and glowing staffs).
Suggestion, I meant to say.
@ David, yeah but you also made it sound like there’s nothing wrong with putting the same wizard striking the same pose with the same looking sword.
The smugglers are not the holy grail of cover matters. There’s bound to be at least one cover that they put up there that doesn’t fit the “bad cover” category. I for one like the cover for “The Name of the wind”.
But I still see what they’re saying, in that, these things are becoming common.
You know the funny thing – I bet if you opened all the books with hooded dudes on their covers, half of them wouldn’t even have a hooded dude IN the book. Lol
I’ll give you a good example. Look at this cover:
That’s the german cover for the hundred thousand kingdoms. Nice, isn’t it?
But get this – though I haven’t finished the book, I am yet to come across a hooded female character. So, I’m like, why is there a hooded chick on the cover then?
See what I mean? Most of these covers are generic. They don’t portray what’s in the book. The publishers probably felt having a hooded woman on the cover was the right thing to do since the book was a fantasy novel. Now, if the publishers had given the book to the artist responsible for that cover and talked with the author and put heads together to pick out, say, a character or a scene from the book, and use that as an illustration for the cover, wouldn’t that be a lot more original?
Publishers also need to be aware of their bumbling with stock photography. Case in point is with JR Ward’s first HC release. The male model on the cover was used before and many people noticed it and pointed it out, making the publisher and in a way Ward (who of course has no real say)look like fools.
And yet they still didn’t fix it, just tweaked it.
Maybe it’s because I come from Horror/Sci-Fi as a reader, but I don’t think that a cover _has to_ feature elements from the story, it only has to give a good idea of what I’m likely getting myself into, and most of time the covers do that for me.
I did find that Swords, more swords, yet another sword… gallery to be unfair; yes you could go all original and give Conan a M14 for a change, but I’d rather not. Also, one should not judge a painting by a single element, but has to look at the whole composition.
Though, I admit that I’m easily swayed to buy a book when I like the cover, and I barely care for acuracy if I alike the book. Case in point:
Nancy A. Collin’s “Sonja Blue”, my main reason to buy that book was the stunnigly gorgeous cover model of the German edition.
Patricia Brigg’s “Moon Called”, Dos Santos painting was just to awesome to pass.
Galenorn’s “Witchling” (I dislike the book, but still find the covers for that series amazingly beautiful).
And neither of them looks anything like the main character of the respective book (they don’t even fit the mood actually), but who cares?
My idea of how a book character looks seldom matches either…
Oh, and by the way:
Did you notice that there’s a dragon on the cover of “Dragon Keeper”, now how cliché is that!
I like that graph Orbit did, if they should do one for 2010 my prognosis would be that Angels will feature high in the list.
Were you guys about to come up with exactly WHO made Prospero Lost‘s cover? I sent an email to the publisher of the book (6 weeks ago), but never got an answer? Any idea? Anyone?
- samosa
@samosa
Sam Weber did Art and Jamie Stafford-Hill did Design.
@samosa
Here’s a link to Sam Weber’s web site.
Akin–there’s no blond chick, either! Well, I guess if you count that cousin…
@ David, yeah but you also made it sound like there’s nothing wrong with putting the same wizard striking the same pose with the same looking sword.
No, actually, I didn’t. I took issue with the suggestion that the cover art is cliched simply because they have a sword, dragon, etc, on it. I specifically pointed out that originality depends more on the handling of the visual element than on it’s mere inclusion in the image created.
@Maili
Woah. How’d you find that out? Because your a Sam Weber – Fan? Or … research? Please tell!
[...] The Book Smugglers have another addition to their Covers Matter feature and this time they are talking about the oh-so cliched Fantasy covers. [...]
[...] The Book Smugglers have another addition to their Covers Matter feature and this time they are talking about the oh-so cliched Fantasy covers. [...]
@ danielle: true. No blond chick, at least none that jumped out at me and made me think, “oh yeah, you’re cover material.”
@ David: in that case, we are in agreement
I really enjoyed reading this post, even though my response is very late.
While reading and looking at the beautiful cover art, I began to think about what was said about those two words together: cover art. True, the cover of a book is a type of artwork, just like the book itself is. An artist and an author (who may consider her- or himself an artist) both work very hard to produce the final product. The author is at the mercy of readers; the artist who drew the covers frequently is forgotten.
Who do we blame when we call a cover “clichéd? The publisher and their marketing department for not pulling out the budget to give us a “better” cover. For not finding an artist to commission who does work we’ll like or appreciate or fawn over better.
The artist is hardly ever brought up. What does the author feel like when she or he receives a poor review? There’s lots of examples of this now since the internet has the ability to make public what otherwise would have remained relatively private. True, not all authors across all time have kept their silence upon received a negative review – some were and still are very vocal. The internet makes responding publicly extremely easy. Negative reviews boil down to opinion. What does the reader like or dislike about a book. What merits does the reader think this book may or may not have. Reviews are subjective.
So is the reception of art. In this case, cover art. How do those artist feel to have their work called “clichéd”? I think when we focus on not liking covers, we frequently forget that, the vocal component of Fantasy readers may not necessarily be the largest, nor do their opinions reflect or speak for the majority. Some Fantasy readers may like the covers we call clichéd. Clearly, some do not.
It all boils down to taste – a very subjective thing. The question of quality also comes into question since one could say liking non-clichéd cover art is liking the quality of that type of cover art over others. But isn’t arguing for quality cover art along the same vein as arguing for quality writing?
What does it mean to want a non-clichéd cover?
In terms of quality, that is.. just as we would ask of “quality” writing?
@samosa
Nah, I just have an interest in cover design.
I agree the cover art departments are leaning more towards cliches but haven’t they always sorta done that? How many Frazetta paintings made it onto Heroic fantasy covers in the 70s and 80s….
Not enough of them. The man created some of the most amazing fantasy illustrations ever to grace a book cover.
@Maili
I see ^^
I consider myself a casual fantasy reader : it’s one of my favorite genres, but after reading (too) much of high fantasy in my teen years, I don’t read as much of it now. So when I pass in front of the “fantasy” table at my favorite bookstore, a lot of my attention will be taken by the covers. Of course, eye-catching cover doesn’t equal great writing and story ; but eye-catching cover does a lot to decide whether I’ll pick a book or not to read the summary, and if I do, than there’s a higher chance I’ll buy it than the book I left on the table. Clearly I’m not the only one here!
So I guess my point is : “boring” covers doesn’t mean they’re not beautiful. “The name of the Wind” and “The drowning city” are beautiful in my eye. But if all the hooded-figures books were put side by side on a table, these two are probably the ones I would look at first – and if I thought they were interesting, I’d buy them without looking at the other covers. My mind is guilty of two bad associations : great cover = great story, and similar covers = similar stories. Which of course I know isn’t true, but that’s still the impression it leaves on me! I’m working on changing that, but I can’t always help it!
Also, there is another association that can be made between similar covers, especially for a reader who doesn’t specialize his/her reading in fantasy, and it’s to think that two similar covers, seen in two different places, are from a same author. Looking at this post I just realized that Brent Weeks and Peter V. Brett are two different authors. Oops. I couldn’t have done that between “Boneshaker” and “The hundred thousand kingdoms” though!
Sorry I was long
I love the US hardback cover of ‘Best Served Cold’(and of course the book is great too). Srsly, the cover plus the title is what got my attention.
Im hurt that you say it ‘fails’ as art. Art is truely in the eye of the beholder and to say ‘any art’ fails seems wrong to me.
What may looked slapped together to you might not be to someone else.
When I’m looking through a huge collection of unfamiliar fantasy/scifi novels, often the first thing thatdraws my attention is a cover that doesn’t contain cliches. I’m sure I’ve missed out on some good fantasy authors because the cover has a hooded hero with a lightning-sparking sword fighting a dragon over a chainmail-bikini clad elf girl under storm-tossed skies. And a fresh cover sure doesn’t guarantee good writing. But I’ve found at least a correlation. So count me as a data point against Newton’s case (though I love MCN’s work).
Great article and I agree that there’s a certain sameness in fantasy covers (and has been for a long time).
However, most of the covers you point out as original appear to be sub-genres (eg. urban fantasy, steampunk) which have their own set of cliches. Boneshaker, for instance – goggles and dirigibles are iconic to the steampunk genre. Beautifully executed though.
[...] then there’s this one which is a great article about fantasy cover art – the good the bad and the ugly! I love the [...]
[...] by the way, I was intensely reminded of a post by The Book Smugglers when I was writing this rant, whereby they observed and commented on some cover cliches in more [...]
[...] an interesting, humourous look at the trends in the industry. It certainly shows that cliches are alive and well in the hearts of readers and the minds of graphic designers and marketers everywhere. Also of note [...]