Good cover models gone bad.: seanan

Good cover models gone bad.

Back in May, I posted about the damage that a bad cover can do to a good book. You can view the original post (and ensuing discussion) here. The consensus at the time was that having a bad cover sucks, and that if your book's cover is bad, it will probably impact the sales of the book. Not exactly rocket science, but still, it's a good thing to think about, especially since—as authors—very few of us have control over our own book covers, so it's good to be prepared to do damage control.

Recently, I got a look at the cover for an upcoming book in an urban fantasy/paranormal romance series That Shall Not Be Named, because I try to be polite like that. For purposes of discussion, we're going to call it An Armchair to Remember, book three in the Ikeamancer series. Our main character, Casey Carpenter, has inherited the family gift for communicating with furniture. Naturally, she uses this power to fight crime, since she doesn't really have anything else to do with her time.

On the cover of the first book, Cushioning the Blow, Casey was pictured as described in the text: reasonably pretty but not going to be anybody's new super-model, with dark hair that needs styling, a wardrobe that looks like it could handle her daily duties as a general manager at Ikea, and a few iconic items in the background. On the cover of the second book, From Desk 'Til Dawn, she was drawn slightly differently, but still believably the same character. Same basic styling, attitude, etc.

On the cover of An Armchair to Remember, she looks like a seventeen-year-old Goth hooker. Please join me in saying, um, what the hell?

Now, I understand that characters will look slightly different from cover to cover. Toby looks a little bit different on the covers of Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night...but these differences are, at least from my perspective, still allowably within the range of "this character is Toby." It's the variance between a picture of Alice drawn by Mimi and a picture of Alice drawn by Bill—they look different, but she's still clearly Alice Price-Healy, getting ready to kick your ass. You can draw the same character within a range and still have it believably stand for the same individual.

The cover for An Armchair to Remember isn't doing that. In fact, if I didn't know the book (the theoretical book), I'd guess that we were looking at the first in a spin-off series starring Casey's ironically trampy-campy younger sister, Carrie, who communicates with clothing and manages a Hot Topic in the mall. It doesn't look a thing like Casey. Casey wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit. It is, essentially, the equivalent of sticking Toby in a mini-skirt and push-up bra for the cover of Late Eclipses, after giving her a bleach job and some serious makeup.

How jarring is this for you? How likely are you to pick up An Armchair to Remember when it looks so different from the other books in the series—when the main character looks so different? Is this going to make you look elsewhere, or do you not care by the time you get to the third book in a series? What about new readers? If this was the first volume you'd seen, would you buy book one after digging it out of the back catalog? Inquiring minds (namely, me) want to know.

sysrae

November 10 2009, 14:23:38 UTC 7 years ago

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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.

kyra_neko_rei

November 10 2009, 22:29:37 UTC 7 years ago

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.

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Good cover models gone bad.

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