The Mysteries of Cover Art

[tealin]

As I may have mentioned in the past, my now ex-roommate is a sales rep for a publisher/book distributor. This means the house is full of books and nearly everyone she knows gets plied with advance copies of new releases to read and comment on. One of the books that recently ended up in my posession was The Floating Island, a YA fantasy novel that just so happened to be illustrated by Brett Helquist. I managed to read it in small spurts over the course of a few months, and ... it was OK. (...probably would have been better if I'd given it some real time...) It's the sort of quasi-fantasy that I tend to favour ('magical realism' I think it's called) and the world seems fairly well-imagined and original but it's not very dimensional, if that makes any sense. Same goes for most of the characters. Like I said, this may be because I never got 'into' it, by reading it in such a piecemeal fashion, but perhaps if I had been grabbed by very real characters and situations I'd have felt more inclined to read it all in one go.

Anyway, the point of this post: I was recently in a bookstore and saw The Floating Island on display, but it had a different cover. ARCs often don't have the final cover art but if they bother to print them in full colour on nice heavy cover paper, that's generally what they stick with. This was a very different cover. Not only was it not a Helquist cover, but it had a dragon on it. It had been a while since I'd finished the book so my memory was a little hazy, but I was pretty sure it didn't have any dragons. It does have Fire Pirates, a ghost, dwarfs, sailors, a magic box, a curse, a king, a mermaid, and a talking cat, but what it does not have is dragons. Or even a dragon. It is most perplexing. Do dragons sell? Have the marketing people even read the book? What will people think when they get to the end and realise they never encountered a dragon through the whole thing? Or was the main character rewritten in the months between ARC release and public release to be a dragon?

The ARC cover

The Final Cover

Comments

[veetvoojagig.livejournal.com]

This is why I want to design book covers for a living. I HATE it when people do that.

Plus, it's a good thing to do with graphic design. *laughs*

[verselus.livejournal.com]

Sigh. This is a perfect example of "don't judge a book by it's cover." To me, it seems that dragons do sell, even to the point that they'll put one on a book that's not about dragons. The people at the publishers probably wanted to get out the idea that the book was fantasy, thus, dragons. It seems the dragons were used in a bit of symbolism here. Hopefully no one is disappointed when they read it. :\

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Personally, dragons turn me off a book. I think the only book I've liked that had a dragon in it was Philosopher's Stone, and even then it was mostly tangential to the plot. There are dragons occasionally in Discworld, of course, but they are Draco parodius so that's an entirely different case.

[verselus.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of hit or miss with dragons myself, but if you like YA novels and are into fractured fairy tales, I highly recommend the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede. They're fun, quick reads.

[bibliokat.livejournal.com]

I *love* those books, and I really like your Morwen icon;)

[verselus.livejournal.com]

Why thank you! I'd love to make a Morwen and Telemain icon, but most of my drawings suck. :P

[bibliokat.livejournal.com]

Awww, that'd be cute! Oh well, I can't draw either;)

[floramir.livejournal.com]

According to this (http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/haydon_elizabeth.html/) 'The Floating Island' is in the 'Dragons' genre.

[floramir.livejournal.com]

For some reason that link didn't work: http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/haydon_elizabeth.html

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Hoa ... she's done other stuff! Euh, heh; I, um ... I would have guessed this was a first novel. [sheepish]

Ahem.

[floramir.livejournal.com]

You would know if you've seen Horatio Hornblower. He's Clayton in the first episode, and he dies first off (just because I liked him). His name is Duncan Bell, and I first saw him in the BRAMWELL series as Bertie Stuart Armstrong. BRAMWELL is an excellent british series, and you'd probably like it, if you don't mind A LOT of blood. It deals with late 19th century surgery. 8P

[bibliokat.livejournal.com]

That's... interesting. I'll have to check it out just to see if it does have a dragon in it now!

Honestly, it drives me *crazy* when the book cover doesn't match the story. It shouldn't be that hard to at least ask the author what the main characters look like. For instance, in the books verselus mentioned, "The Enchanted Forest Chronicles" (one of my FAVORITE quartets, though the first book is the best;), the main character is a princess with black hair that she usually wears in braids. It's really not that hard to figure out that on the cover, her hair should be black and in braids. Seriously. The whole point of the story is that she's not a normal princess with flowing hair. I especially hate that the copies that I bought about ten years ago have decent cover art, but the ones that are out now are different covers where the princess looks more "girly." Argh!

Um, so now I'm done taking up space in your journal for my rant. *little bit sheepish* But if you like young adult fantasy, I really second the rec for Patricia Wrede's books - "Dealing with Dragons" is the first one.

[lepitot.livejournal.com]

Oh! My Aunt got a preview of the ARC for that book. She went to the national convention of English Teachers or something in Pittsburgh (T. A. Barron was there! She got me a signed copy! WOOO!) Anyway, I started reading that. I saw it was going to be illustrated by him, and I meant to tell you, but I never did. I didn't read it (although, I was supposed to, and then review it so my aunt could recommend it to the middle school teachers.

What I did read was interesting. I don't remember much about it. Just that he didn't yet have facial hair or something and he was waiting for it, and he was well beyond mature in human years. I probably should have read it, but I'm a terrible reader.

[eveforward.livejournal.com]

There's an old filk song about this phenomenon, goes something like (to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain":

There's a dragon on the cover of the book! (of the book!)
There's a dragon on the cover of the book!
Though it's about a magic flagon
On the cover there's a dragon
There's a dragon on the cover of the book!

And yes, the reason is, Dragons Sell. According to publishing wisdom, anyway. My first book had a dragon on the cover; a fierce green dragon, which is odd because the dragon in the story is rather effeminate and pink. I did some research later and learned that the cover art was painted in 1985. The book was written in 1990.

The relationship between cover art and story is often tenuous, and authors have no control over the cover art, so you get a lot of this sort of thing.

[tannhaeuser.livejournal.com]

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

Oh wow - I haven't seen that artwork in a few decades: we used to have a big poster in my bedroom of that! I was too young to realize that there was an controversy, although I was vaguely aware that this artwork did not strictly interpret the subjects of the book. I feel weird, because I have very strong feelings about how the author should be given far more creative control over their book covers than they are...but man, I really like this art! Always have! Even if it has a lot of weird stuff like Emus, for me, it really does conjure up the feel of the books (as well as Tolkein's original, highly stylized, almost symbolic illustrations), with its many fantastic creatures (at least some of which are depicted in the book, like Shelob, the Wraiths' steeds, etc.), black and red tones (dark, evil, fire, time of war, etc.), and the highly stylized treatment of everything - almost primitive in its simplicity - suggesting something set in prehistory, or in early gothic, medieval times (reminds me of some of the stained glass windows, tapestries, etc. from the period) - in a way, it's perfect to me in that it gives the reader a good idea of what tone to expect without ruining the specifics of the plot details. But you may all feel free to disagree...

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

Having a close mentorship/penpalship with a 10-year-old girl that loves reading, YES, DRAGONS SELL! She and several of her friends are currently dragon-crazy (and are very excited about the movie coming out soon for that Eregon book). I went to a children's bookstore to buy her a gift for her birthday and the bookshelves were crammed with three types of new books: books about dragons, books about witches/wizards, and 'miserable' books - books in the same vein as the A Series of Unfortunate Events. I had to look darn hard for Roald Dahl.

I may be mistaken, but I would guess that preteens don't always buy their own books, but their parents or relatives get them books as gifts. "What does little Jessica want?" "Oh, she likes dragons" - and The Floating Island is sold.

Some of the newer translations of Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, etc. that I've read have completely bizarre covers with unrelated Ancient Greek busts, columns, or ruins on them, or weird modernist abstracts on them. My school's publishing house regretably lets one of the professors do the cover art for some of its translations...

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Hell, I'm excited about that film, and I wasn't even all that impressed by the book!

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Almost every story I ever wrote had a dragon of some sort in it. What pisses me off slightly is that dragons in stories always seem to be either:
a) Big, fearsome, impressive and deeply evil.
or
b) Small, cute-looking, pink or purple, and good.
That's why the dragons in my stories are big, impressive, fearsome, and good (generally), but cute they are not. They are also never pink. One is purple, but she's also fifty-seven feet long with very sharp teeth, so that makes up for it.

A series you might like is Temeraire by Naomi Novik. It's set in the Napoleonic Wars (well, parallel Napoleonic Wars), but as well as armies and navies (navys? What is the plural of 'navy', anyway?) there are air forces of dragons.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is navies.

Also, if your beasts rode into battle on horseback, dismounted, then fought, would they be dragoon dragons?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I dunno, dragons on horseback ... it might get kind of ridiculous.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

That was good! But:
A) It could be a smaller dragon
B) The dragon might be able to help the poor horse what with the lift available with its wings.
C) Hey, who'd mess around with that horse?

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Nice pun. My dragons would probably stick to eating horses, though.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read The Two Princesses of Bamarre? There is a really interesting dragon character in that book.

Apparently, the only thing dragons hate more than humans is other dragons, but they get lonely, so sometimes they keep humans as pets for their amusement; they always end up eating them in the end, even if they regret it because afterwards they miss their pets.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of that book, but it sounds quite interesting so I'll have a look for it.

[purebristles.livejournal.com]

Gail Carson Levine, I think. It's not bad, but Ella Enchanted was better. Ella was made into a bad movie. The Two Princesses of Barmarre was... badly edited I think. Plot was very flabby.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I like Ella Enchanted.

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

Wow, Tealin, I knew that you had a lot of readers who read a lot of great fantasy; I didn't realize that they also were writers of fantasy themselves! How cool is that, are they, and are you?? (bows obsequiously)

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's not as if any of them have been published. Thanks anyway, though.

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

Hey, if all the most talented, accomplished people were all actually recognized by the world as such...? Well, it would be a very different world! Many of my best friends are unemployed actors, artists, writers, etc. that are so talented...the fact that you do it at all, especially in your spare time, without pay, totally impresses me! My brother writes fiction- he's a lot better at writing than I am. If you or anyone else would like to see what he writes, I could steer you his way (if not that's ok too).

when life reflects art

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds just like something out of "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino, where books with the same names and the same authors turn out to have completely different plots.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I think they just called up an artist and said "We need a cover for a fantasy book, it's called The Floating Island, and we need it quick" and failed to send the artist a copy of the book. So the poor artist just panicked and painted a dragon. I expect that sort of thing happens.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

But there was already a cover! A cover by the same famous illustrator who did the illustrations on the inside of the book!

[hyel.livejournal.com]

...I could guess at the motivations of artists, not of editors. They have their strange and eldritch ways. Robert Anton Wilson suggested it had something to do with being the monkey on the top branch.

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

I could write a novel myself (well, not really, but it would be long and boring like some novels) about the almost laughable (often infuriating) disconnect between typical cover art and the actual books underneath (reminds me of the ridiculous bodice-popping poster art generated for the semi-recent movie version of Persuasion). As a big fan of Orson Scott Card's work (not so much of his recent highly inflammatory political commentary), I know how unhappy he's always been with the "original" artwork generated for the "Ender" series of books, that really have nothing to do with the stories, other than suggest they occur in the future (enigmatic spaceships flying over barren, industrial landscapes - about as boring, unimaginative, and tangential to the stories as you could conjure up)...and yet...argh! In a bookstore, knowing nothing about him or the books, there was something about the cover of "Ender's Game" that seemed to pop out at me from all the other covers, and so I picked it up and started reading the first couple of pages, and was instantly hooked - thus began a love affair with one of my favorite authors and some of my very favorite books! So does this very cynical approach to marketing a book actually work? Would I have picked up the book with a more appropriate cover, as long as it was executed at least as well? Do authors typically have good enough taste in art to be trusted to pick the best artwork or illustrators to represent their stories? We may never know the answers to these disturbing questions, although in this particular case, I prefer Helquists original cover, not only because it's actually related to the story, but I like the style of execution a lot better. I do think there ought to be some sort of recourse available to consumers who buy a book based on cover art which actually has nothing to do with the story (at least there are spaceships mentioned in the Ender's series - unlike featuring a dragon prominently on a book that actually contains NO DRAGONS!!) if they end up being dissatisfied with the book, they ought to be compensated not only for the price of the book, but for the time they wasted looking for the cover contents in vain, and the emotional/psychological stress of realizing they had been LIED to - it seems like this all ought to fall under the "truth in advertising" umbrella! (of course, I'd also like to prosecute comic book publishers that feature cover art not only extremely misleading in terms of content, but often completely different stylistcally and usually a million times better-executed than the crappy artwork inside - but maybe nobody cares but me)

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

I should say that in the case of Disney poster and video cover art (particularly everything produced since the 80's), I know for a fact that the makers of the movie typically have little to no influence over the way their films are marketed (the striking exceptions being the "red" Mulan poster and the "Tarzan" poster featuring Glen Keane's rough model), and that the production artists rarely if ever are asked to generate any of the promotional art...and it shows! All those awful posters featuring every character in the movie with a big, stupid grin, way off model, cheesily airbrushed in livid purples and magentas...bleah! In this case, they're not only cutting the creators out of the process, they're ignoring the advice of trained professional artists and illustrators, many of whom have a background in advertisting and graphic design! How stupid is that? but if John Lasseter and Ed Catmul can be believed, all of that is going to change - apparently at Pixar, they have a lot more control in not only approving but using production artists to create the advertising and merchandise associated with the movies (like the little golden books!), just like Disney used to do.

[fani.livejournal.com]

I usually get annoyed with these things too, bot oddly enough there is only one illustrator who does it on purpose, and frankly, I don't mind.

His name is Josh Kirby and rarely has his painting been too faithful with Pterry's text.

Motivation? ...muh...that's a good question.