I've been in Rochester, Minnesota since Monday and haven't had much inspiration for blogging. Today I finally had time to wander into the local Barnes & Noble. It's nice to get to visit a real bookstore.
I was immediately struck by the first rack of fantasy books I saw -- all the covers looked like romance novels with hot babes on them. I had to look closer because I thought someone must have stuck a bunch of romances in the wrong spot. Nope, they are all fantasy books. Is this some new trend?
Having seen those and feeling, "Yuck, what terrible cover art the publishers are going for these days.", I walked along the entire fantasy section simply looking at how the covers were like in general. Now, they did improve a bit over that first section (where someone must have purposely gathered all of the new Romantasy) but I was truly underwhelmed. I sure wish I could be in charge of a marketing section at a publisher. I would do much better covers, ones that would really grab the readers.
Oh, where are the new Frazetta's and Alan Lee's and John Howe's for today's books?
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Covers are really important for books, because some covers are so attractive, I just have to have them, regardless of the books. And I would so not love Romantasy covers!
ReplyDeleteThats a good point. It just might be a trend, I've even noticed that with the books for kids under teen. Some of the fantasy ones just aren't cutting it these days.
ReplyDeleteI think they are getting lazy, too, and getting artists to use photos in their cover art rather than doing actual paintings. I really don't like the covers done with photos.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a post about judging scifi books by their cover a little while back. I think there may be more female fantasy readers than male now. They are aiming the covers at the demographic. Is the content of the novels also romancy?
ReplyDeletei'm so sick of the state of covers in general. there are just so many great artists i don't understand how come covers have becomes so terrible... also, do they even let the artists read the books first? because correlation between cover and story isn't often there. ugh.
ReplyDeleteThe Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance novels are a pain in the ass, and the covers that are put on them are all very generic and pretty badly done too. I agree that there's a definite sense of laziness about it all, because they know that it's gonna make a quick buck either way, hence the sucky cover (which usually contains a sucky novel too).
ReplyDeleteI think there's a lot of covers in general that are just bad. I still wonder why paranormal books are placed in fantasy - shouldn't they be in horror?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't consider paranormal to be fantasy. Budd, why would they think that women want really bad cover art? I don't know if these books are romancy, but I would guess they have at least some of that in them, though it seems more like it is about having unrealistically kick-ass heroines.
ReplyDeleteWhat? I thought ALL fantasy readers wanted busty women and lots of cleavage and a studly man with a sword!? Isn't that the target market? (KIDDING) But yeah... in adult fantasy, that often IS what I see on covers. And I tend to be more drawn to... say a relic. I don't really like book covers with PEOPLE because I prefer to let my imagination create the people.
ReplyDeleteYeah, some of these covers are real stinkers. I was noticing the same thing last week while in Borders Books. My nephew did my cover. Looks pretty good I have to say. My books should arrive any day (maybe today) and I'll get your copy out in the mail right away.
ReplyDeleteStephen Tremp
I love paintings for covers, and prefer ones that show a real scene from the book, preferably done realistically. I don't like covers that simply pose someone as the focal point, and I don't like bright, splashy ones.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I hate those fantasy covers that look like romance covers. Argh. Drives me crazy!
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, my experience over 40 years of reading so far has been that the quality of the cover generally does reflect the quality of the story. Logically it shouldn't be that way, but somehow it is.
ReplyDeleteWhile I haven't seen the specific data set that the publishers are looking at, I can tell you they're not making covers based on laziness. They're looking at sales numbers and marketing surveys and such. And what they're finding is that photographic covers are quite popular these days. So the trends are heading that way because those kinds of covers are selling books—no other reason. Hiring a model, a photographer, and a digital illustrator isn't cheaper than hiring a painter. ;) In fact, it's for that reason that you often see only the main character on the cover in an indeterminate setting—they can't afford to shell out the bucks for multiple models and build a scene from the book. And if the truth be told, most urban fantasies & paranormal romances are character-driven, anyway—why not feature them on the cover?
ReplyDeleteFull disclosure: my covers will be digital illustrations of my main character. Clearly, I'm biased. :) However, I understand where ya'll are coming from, because I didn't grow up with these kinds of covers either. But what I am impressed with is that there's usually some significant effort on the photographer's part to depict the character accurately. In my case, they had a jeweler make a very specific charm necklace that my character wears throughout the series, and the model then wore it throughout the shoot. They dressed him in clothes I specified, did his hair the way I described, etc.
As for WHY photographic covers might be more popular, I'm guessing it's a function of having such a media-saturated society—everybody wants a sneak peek of what the "movie version" might be like. Sorry for the long post, Ted—just thought this was interesting.
No need to apologize for along post! I think it is great to have discussion. I hope your cover truly is great, but I still think their marketing surveys are off. I'm sure there are plenty of people who do like such covers, but I suspect the majority of people if given a choice between these covers and great painted scenes from the book would take the latter. The ones I saw in the bookstore yesterday are covers I would walk right by without noticing if they didn't happen to be shelved under fantasy.
ReplyDeletehttp://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-of-evony-video-game-ads/
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link, Budd. All I can say is, we all need to stop buying stuff advertised this way if we want them to see the light.
ReplyDeleteAs both a writer AND an artist those romancy fantasy covers also pain me. We need more dragons! ;)
ReplyDeleteLyn
W.I.P. It: A Writer's Journey
Paranormal is NOT fantasy. My WIP is YA Fantasy, and not YA Paranormal (I saw the distinction once as Fantasy taking place in a different world, Paranormal in our world with magical/supernatural beings, and Urban in a city in our world with magical/supernatural beings).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't reach much high fantasy (other than Tolkien - no special reason, just so much else out there to read first), my eyes are more drawn to beautiful fantasy covers. I never pick up the ones who have "hot babes" on the cover, and those would be my last choice to read. I don't know if it's because I'm a woman (and no, I don't get offended by the outfits - some are pretty cool), but I prefer something like the picture in your Fantasy & Sci-fi Blogger Award.
Perhaps they're using sleazy covers to make up for bad writing, I don't know...