Good cover models gone bad.

I've had books that I've really, really loved that I still find fairly off-putting because of the cover. The most prominent one that comes to mind is Beauty by Robin McKinely. I love that books and own two copies so that I have one to lend out. But I still avoid looking at the cover, and really can't, for the most part.

1. My Mum knew authors when I was a kid, and they always told me, 'Sweetie, we don't really have control over our covers.' I would start with feeling awful for the author. No one deserves a crappy cover.

2. If I'm a long-time reader of the series, I'd be Very Grumpy at the art department at that publishing house for desecrating the heroine by making her Very Not Herself on the cover.

3. If I've never seen the series before, I'll still be likely to take a gander at the back-blurb, any reviews on/inside the book, and peek at the first page. I may look for the first few books as well. I don't really read my paranormal romances for crazy amounts of sex (the reason I quit the a very famous series in the genre series as a teen. You don't just turn into crazy erotica, people!)

4. I will grumble about how a specific, cookie-cutter depiction of female covers is used so often to sell covers. But I'm grouchy like that.

I've spent at least two recent trips to a bookstore with Friend J running my fingers along the line of sf/f books and pointing out the urban fantasy based solely on the covers. It was a sort of sad statement at how they were all melding together in terms of style. I know how little control authors have, but still, I like a good-looking cover, and I don't think it's too much to ask that if there is a person [people] on the cover, they cue up to actual characters and fit their descriptions.

That said, though, I rarely let a cover affect my decision to buy a book. If it's a series I've been reading, I'm invested and grabbing it because it's the next one. If it's book 1 from an author I haven't read before, chances are it caught my eye because I saw mention of it someplace, and/or the premise sounds interesting. ~shrugs~ That's my two cents anyway.

Since that series is not actually on the shelves, I expect you to write it *g*...

Oh, the cover. Actually, not much if it's a series I already know. It may cause me to wonder whether this is a spin-off series, as you suggest, but if I already know and trust the author I may well say "I'll buy it anyway", and if it is labelled as "book three" or whatever then I'll just rant a bit to anyone I see in the shop about stupid artists who can't (or won't) read anything about what they are illustrating (Colin Kapp's "A Wizard of Anharite", which is SF but has a barbarian type with a mostly-naked girl climbing up his leg, neither of whom are even vaguely in the book).

And note that most of the books I buy these days are mail order, so in those cases I hardly see the cover at all.

It it's the first one I've seen, and hasn't already been recommended, then the cover may have a negative effect on whether I pick it up, but in that case it will be the esthetics of the cover rather than whether the description is correct (the teenage goth hooker, for instance, if drawn in the same style as the R&R cover, wouldn't put me off; I would then be slightly confused when that character didn't turn up in the book). But then I've been reading F&SF long enough to realise that the cover of a book often has nothing to do with its contents...

Assuming that I was following the Ikeamancer series, I'd probably be buying book three by looking for the author and title, and the cover would be irrelevant.

If I ran into the third book first, the cover might have turned me off fifteen or twenty years ago. Nowadays, I find that the back cover blurb and reading the first chapter are better indicators.

And if I find book three of a series first, and the series looks interesting, I'll hunt book one down through the library, and decide whether or not I want to buy from that.

(accidentally posted on the previous entry >.>)

When there are significant differences between the character described and the character on the cover, I flip forward, stare a while and wonder why the author agreed to it. I know that sometimes that's out of the author's hands... but I can't help but wonder why.

Also I despise the old Discworld covers. They are quite frankly hideous and you can't persuade me otherwise.

Mostly I look at both title and cover. Unless it's by an author I am familiar with/have heard of with generally positive opinions, I'll give it a miss if either the title or the cover is awful.

From what I've heard, unless you're a Name, the cover is far more likely than not, to be out of the author's hands. Sometimes authors raise a big enough fuss about how This Is Not Anyone In The Book (if they even get to see the cover before it's on shelves) to get it changed -- but this is a noteworthy success if so.

And even if you're a Name, I heard Michael Whelan at a convention, describing how the publisher of All the Weyrs of Pern... Well, according to the story and my recollection of it, they picked one of the sample sketches Whelan did, and told McCaffery "this is what he wants to draw." Then they took that sketch and told Whelan, "She picks this one."

Eventually they compared notes and got rather peeved, since she'd have picked one of his other sketches, had she seen it. (And unless I miss my memory, one or both of them soon shed that publisher...)

While it's the blurb that decides whether or not I buy the book, it's the title/cover that determines whether I even look at the blurb. I remember one book I liked where the image of the heroine on the cover was a fair-skinned redhead, while in the book, she was described as being a brown-skinned, dark-haired Native American. Huh?

There was fairly recently a Young Adult novel with an (India) Indian main character had a cover vetoed because "there's another YA novel coming out this year with an Indian girl's face on the front cover," when Primus knows how many show up every year with a white girl's face on the cover, most of them with the same hair color. But of course, [sarcasm], white people are individuals and they all look very different from each other, whereas two nonwhite girls of the same ethnicity are effectively the same picture. [/sarcasm]

And even if they do manage to get the race portrayed right on the cover, there's cases in which a Black girl described as dark-skinned and/or with natural hair is shown on the cover as a lighter-skinned girl with straightened hair.

It rather, to say the least, sucks.

Ikeamancer.... *giggle*

If I'm not familiar with the author or series and nobody I trust has recommended it to me, yeah, a bad cover will absolutely keep me from picking it up and taking a look. Once I get to know and like an author and/or series, I'd like a nice cover, but understand that marketing types can be total morons sometimes. It can be a major impediment to me considering a book I have no foreknowledge of, though.

I have a personal dislike for book covers featuring photos of Stock Fantasy Models In Alluring Poses Wearing Scanty Leather Outfits And Holding Weaponry, despite the fact that I am perfectly comfortable reading books in which such characters feature prominently. Call it a quirk, but seeing the glossy photo version always looks so much more tacky than what I dream up from the text, and so much more gratuitous. It leaves nothing to the imagination; and I *like* using my imagination. Actual art, however, I'm infinitely more patient with. So, taking a leap to assume that An Armchair to Remember is of the former variety, I am quite likely to be jarred. If it was the third book in a series, it would rankle even more, but not enough that I wouldn't buy it, assuming I liked the previous two instalments.

From memory, I have only ever purchased one book with a real-life-fantasy-maiden cover: Firethorn by Sara Micklem, which (by the by) I heartily reccommend. Which isn't to say I'd be so offput by a cover as to not buy the book; I'm more likely to take arbitrary issue with the phonics of a made-up name, or distrust the blurb, or something. I'm weird that way.

It gets rather boring, seeing all of these leather stripper outfits and suchlike, all the same or vastly similar and repetetive . . . something less "sexy" but more novel is automatically flagged as Potentially Interesting for me.

I just saw a music video recently (Evacuate the Dance Floor), and the woman who turned my head, the one I'd seek out and ask out if I were there, was not the miniskirted-and-pushup-bra'd lead singer who took up most of the video, but a woman who showed up in the video for three seconds, clothed head-to-toe (pants and baggy shirt) in black---just a throwaway shot of a random extra, but it was different, and what was showcased was her athleticism, not her OMGsexyness. And she upstaged every "sexy" dancer in the video, for me.

Although the things that most get my attention in cover art is a dynamic composition and good color use . . . but I shall refrain from going into the visual theory lecture.

If I'm already liking the series, I'll snap it up, buy it, look at the cover, wince, and read it.

If it's the first I've seen of the cover... Hm. Trashy cover pictures don't scare me away, but by this time they are a mark against a book because there are So. Frickin'. Many. of them now. If the back cover is interesting, and the first page and/or sample-blurb are good, I might pick it up anyway.

If I read it, and it's good, I'll grab the others no matter what the cover is, examine the cover, and either wince or nod approvingly as desired.

But yeah, if it's the first book I see... That back-blurb had better not be a melodramatic carbon copy of every other paranormal smut romance book that's on the shelves these days, or it's going to go right back on the shelf, like as not. Cover sends a message for the target audience; if the back-blurb agrees that the cover's message is accurate... I'm not that target audience, much.

That help?

I wonder if, now that most reasonably famous authors have websites and direct real-time fan feedback and whatnot, there will start being a trend for series to be re-released with fan-specified covers, even if only for limited runs?

I can imagine author sites (via publishers) saying "We're running a competition to decide on some new short-run covers for this best-selling series. We'll have some standard variations (minimalist, single-symbol, florid, arty) and will also be considering fan-submitted covers. If the result sells well, we may consider a second print run..."

Ooh, or how about being able to order a book from the author's/publisher's website which, for an extra dollar, has a custom cover?

Hmm, I'm seeing a market here...

I think I remember talking to David Weber at a Michigan convention, and him complaining that one of his books had his leading female look just like Michael Jackson post op (it did, and it was awful.) As I recall, he said sales for that book were lower than the previous one in the series, and the next one in the series. Evidently, even long-time readers were turned off by the bad, mis-matched cover art.

I picked up Cast in Shadow, by Michelle Sagara, entirely because I loved Kaylin, as pictured on the front of the book. I picked up the second book, Cast in Courtlight the instant it came out solely and utterly because it was the sequel to a story I absolutely loved, but oh my God, who the fucking fuck is this on the cover?! Exceedingly terrible composition of a woman's back with an ugly unzipped dress doing a potato-sack impression, what looks for all the world like a terrible bleach job on her hair . . . and, incidentally, she was very brunette on the first cover and that is how I think of her; it's very exceedingly jarring to see her as a blonde.

So, what this basically boils down to is that cover-art disasters are, IMHO, somewhat less devastating if they're on successive books, after the series has obtained itself a fanbase, because hopefully people who've read the first book will have liked it enough to get the second despite hideous cover art, but if it shows up on the first book, all bets are off.

Of course, successive books have a higher likelihood of having disaster covers simply by virtue of the fact that a first book cannot show a conflicting appearance from previous books. So that's helpful, that many disasters can only affect sequels.

Anybody know if it does any good to write to a publisher saying "I love X series, but the cover on X: book 4 sucks?" Granted, the damage is probably done for that print run, but do they listen when they're designing the next book's cover?

I hear you...bad covers can do awful, awful things to a book's sales. And it drives me crazy when the cover artist was evidently told, "This is a cover for a fantasy book of some kind" without any sort of contextual details and attended the Boris Vallejo School of Figural Art for a night to get inspirations, thus leading to a cover for, say, an urban fantasy novel about a telekinetic nun displaying a woman dressed in a fishnet body stocking whose only concession to faith is the large, spiky crucifix nestled between her barely-covered 44 DDD breasts.

For my money, though, the number one offender is Daryl K. Sweet, whose covers for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series are often so badly rendered that it takes considerable forensic analysis to determine which major character he was attempting to portray.

But I digress. Changing artists in mid-series can be an especially distressing shift. Sometimes it works well- Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series has been well served by the same cover artist who's making yours- but it can be just awful, especially if the artist has not apparently made any effort to be faithful to the text. If I'm halfway into a series, I'm unlikely to drop it because of a jarring cover, but it may well make me growl, and it will certainly affect the perceptions of the sort of reader who will pick up a book in mid-series. I won't let a bad cover override a good recommendation, but I realize I may well be in the minority, and I can and have picked up new series partway in on the basis of a good cover (and conversely have been disappointed on a few occasions when I discovered that the promise of the cover wasn't delivered by the text, perhaps unfairly turning me against otherwise commendable series).

On an entirely unrelated note- I would totally read the series you're currently hypothetically discussing, bad third cover and all. A few months ago, some friends and I ran a home-brewed LARP in which everyone was a B-list superhero. I think my favorite character there was Credenza, whose power was talking to furniture. My character, Copycat, had no powers of his own but claimed to the other characters that he could mimic the powers of anyone around him; when Credenza was knocked out with no one in the room, he was called upon to interview the antique desk she was slumped over to find out what happened to her. He dodged the issue by claiming it only spoke French, and therefore he was unable to understand it.

That's a good question!!

Bad covers do turn me off, but the third in a series? Hmmm. If I loved the author I'd be looking for the next book and the art style makes it easier to "spot" it when it's on an endcap or some such.

But this could be a clever ploy to get a reader that doesn't usually like the art style of the previous covers to take a look at the third book. Avid readers will seek the author anyway, with aforementioned grumbling, but new people might be drawn in for a look. Book three isn't too far in to get me, as a reader, to backtrack. I, as a reader, prefer the covers to have a related look. But I can certainly see the marketing aspect in here as well.

If I've been reading the series, I will ignore the cover, read the back, and decide I want the book based on that. I will try to get it at the library to see if I love it, though, because if I don't owning that cover will REALLY ANNOY ME. If it's in hardcover, which I prefer not to buy, I will wait for paperback even IF the library doesn't have it. And I will pray the paperback has a revised cover.

If I'm a new reader and I don't like goth clothing-communicator stories and similar stuff, I will ignore the entire series if this is the first book of it I happen to see.

Edited to add: if it is a series I like okay but don't love, I WILL NOT buy the book with that cover, not in hardcover, not in paperback. Dishonest or screwed up covers annoy me. I might read it from the library, but if the library hasn't got it and it was an "enh, this is okay, whatever" series, I may well be done with it.

If I'm a new reader and I DO like goth clothing-communicator stories, I will dig up the first book. If I also like non-goth furniture communicators, I may read - though I will be wary of the quality of the series, I do know that covers aren't under authorial control. If I don't like non-goth furniture communicators, I will be REALLY ANNOYED at the waste of my time.

I'm probably not a typical reader since I rarely pick up a book just from seeing it in a store--I go with favorite authors and recommendations, mostly. I also stopped reading blurbs when two books in a row gave away the main point of the story on the back cover. I will consider something "cold" if the book clearly seems to involve an interest of mine (historical, literary, etc.) in the title or in what the reviewers say about it (I do glance at those on the covers, sometimes). Then I read the first couple pages.

That said, my default position is that the cover of the book has nothing to do with the story or the characters--therefore when it actually does I get to be pleased. I was glad you liked your covers.

Lola

I generally don't care about the covers if I liked the book, but I can still grumble about them. Like one cover of a book I really like, which has terrible lighting that makes half the people on the cover look like they have indigestion.
Or my copy of The Tombs of Atuan, which has a crappy movie cover where the dark-skinned hero is a blond and the white heroine is Chinese (????)