Friday, February 06, 2009

This Just In

Epic Fantasy fans think girls are yucky. Author is amused.

No, no, we certainly don't want a girl on the cover of our gritty, tough fantasy novel, do we? (Even if that girl is the main character.) If we let that happen, girls might read the book, or talk to us, or something, and that would be horrible.

(There's a side order of "Ooh! A Map! Shiny!", but I'll leave that aside for now.)

And, yes, de gustibus non est disputandum, but the immediate and one-sided reaction is certainly eyebrow-raising.
Your Hornswoggler is Andrew Wheeler Released into the wild 2/06/2009 09:12:00 AM
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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I'm emphatically not a fan of the US cover, it's not about there being (gasp!) a girl involved. It's that the thing is a stitched-together Frankencover. I'd be fine with the map. I'd be fine with the girl. Jamming them both together is just clashtastic.

But Abercrombie seems okay with it, so I guess that's what matters.

Fri Feb 06, 10:32:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

They should have gone with the UK cover. It's a distinctive look for Abercrombie's series, and one that's going to appeal to new readers a lot more than the genre smash-up they have now. For the last ten years or so, there has been a supreme distaste for having human figures on alt world fantasy and SF covers, because it's seen as too pulp, and that distaste only grew when human figures became a popular device for contemporary fantasy titles. For largely that reason, the UK covers for SFF, which favor landscapes, parchment and other non-human devices, and hooded or obscured human figures over actual portraits, are routinely preferred over the U.S. ones which are considered crasser and demeaning. U.S. publishers' art departments routinely express bewilderment at this outrage. I do not share this distaste -- I think it's silly -- but changing the look of Abercrombie's series so radically at this point is just a bad idea.

Fri Feb 06, 01:08:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

I agree with Lianemercial, the map cover (UK) is awesome, the girl cover (the one Orbit almost went with) was cool, half of each just doesn't look right.
Personly, I prefer covers that don't have people on them, I like to imagine the characters my own way, but I don't let it stop me from buying a book - I love urban fantasy.

Fri Feb 06, 02:59:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

Just how many hand-and-a-half swords does one swordswoman need, anyway? One of those covers has three, all hung to be drawn in the left hand.

Fri Feb 06, 03:49:00 PM 2009
RobB said...

I was a little surprised at the big hub-bub about it, too.

I still maintain that I like the US version better.

Fri Feb 06, 03:59:00 PM 2009
Jeff C said...

It has nothing to do with having a girl on the cover for me, either. It would be just as ugly with a similar looking dude on the cover. The UK cover was so fantastic. Anything different was bound to be a letdown, at least for me.

Fri Feb 06, 04:45:00 PM 2009
Andrew Wheeler said...

KatG: I'm not so sure the urban fantasy look wasn't the original source of the "human figures are icky" complaints on the Internet. And the complaints about this particular cover focused very heavily on the fact that this particular figure was female -- there was clearly an undertone of "strong women" equals "that crap I don't like." (Perhaps there's a comparison to the sniggering similar fans make about George R.R. Martin's character Brienne.)

And I don't think the "supreme distaste" you suggest is all that widespread -- I think it's actually a relatively small number of poorly socialized young men on the Internet.

Look at the current bestselling epic fantasies on Amazon -- even leaving aside Butcher and Harris & Co. as contemporary, there are traditional painted covers on books by Terry Goodkind, Lois McMaster Bujold, Brett Weeks, Brandon Sanderson, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Gail Z. Martin, Stephen R. Donaldson, Greg Keyes, and R.A. Salvatore. Throw in big sellers not currently on the list, like Raymond E. Feist and the piles of Wizards of the Coast books, and it looks like strong-selling fantasy has a traditional painted cover most of the time.

George R.R. Martin is the big exception at the moment, but his current cover style was a relaunch with the last book -- before that (except for the less-successful hardcover of Game of Thrones), his covers were in that style as well.

So I have to disagree with you: there is an audience that objects to covers with figures -- particular female figures, and most particularly strong female figures -- but they are more Internet-loud than the general readership.

Fri Feb 06, 07:52:00 PM 2009
Andrew Wheeler said...

KatG: And, on a lighter, more flippant point, I understand what you're saying, but, to a publishing person, "they should have gone with the UK cover" is like saying "GM should give up on car manufacturing and just distribute Toyotas."

Fri Feb 06, 07:54:00 PM 2009
Andrew Wheeler said...

And, personally, I don't love the final cover myself -- it's OK, but several of the intermediate covers were stronger. It looks like they had two competing concepts and got tired enough to say "let's just do both" -- that does happen sometime, unfortunately, but what the people steering the process (whether editors or marketers) need to do at that point is to step back, maybe switch off to a different designer, and take another run at it.

(I had one like that myself, recently, and it wasn't pretty. But we regrouped, thought again about what message we wanted to convey, and gave a clear direction to the designer that ended up with a something the author, editorial, and marketing all liked.)

Fri Feb 06, 08:00:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

I get what you're saying about an Internet minority and I do agree that it's a minority of fans, but it's not all guys. There are a lot of people who really hate art with people on SF or alt world fantasy, and I've had numerous discussions about these covers, me taking the defending position, well before the explosion of women on contemporary fantasy covers, coinciding with the rise of paranormal romance. Further, there are always lots of conversations when the UK and US covers of a big alt world debut or title are different about how the UK one is better. For Patrick Rothfuss' cover, for instance, which had as one version in the US a male figure, the UK version with no human figures was preferred and the US versions without a human figure were preferred. The US publishers find that the traditional art sells well and so use it, but this is routinely complained about. Even if the figure on the US cover of Abercrombie's book was a male, I would have expected fans to complain on the Internet that the UK one was better.

I do agree that the expansion of paranormal romance that coincided with an art department trend to put female figures on contemporary fantasy covers did cause a girls are icky reaction, but it built on a distaste that was already there, is all I'm saying.

As a former publishing person, I get that U.S. publishers want their own look. But in Abercrombie's case, they'd already used the UK art for the US covers of the first trilogy, and this stand alone is set in the same universe. Therefore, trying to switch or alter the series look, which has come to be identified with Abercrombie in both the US and the UK, seems to me to be a bad idea unless Orbit US is planning to reissue all four books with this new cover look. Just my view. I think the US cover is okay -- I like the blood splatters -- but since the book is not set in a new world or milieu for Abercrombie, I think GM should have just stuck with Toyota's design like before. :)

Sat Feb 07, 09:19:00 PM 2009

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