Do bad book covers influence you

[murphy]

Originally Posted by andrew.v.spencer

Covers definitely influence the buying public. If you have a favourite author or have read good reviews then you might buy it anyway. However, if you're browsing unknown (to you) fantasy authors then you might go for the most interesting/least embarassing.

American fantasy covers are frequently of the he-man with a sword/half naked woman and badly drawn dragon. It doesn't matter if the book in question is particularly deep and philosophical, or is short on violence. They appeal directly to the fifteen year old boy.

I think you are talking about the paranormal romance covers. Most of the fantasy I see and buy doesn't have covers like you just described. For instance, books written by Melanie Rawn, Anne McCaffrey, C. S. Friedman, C. J. Cherryh, and Jim Butcher, just to name a few.

[Lith]

They've been getting out of it, even in the romance category- the cover can only get so racy before you can't take the book out in public. But from about the 60s to the 90s, there was a lot of it.

It's a trend I'm not sad to see go.

[Switchback]

I think one immediate case I can think of, the forelands series by coe. great books with terrible covers. I found the books though without any recommendations, and without any previous knowledge of coe or his works. I don't exactly remember what drew me to it, maybe the cover was so bad I had to see what it was about??? So there's an idea. Just make the cover really, really bad, instead of only slightly bad....

[D_Davis]

Because of my love for Simak, I've had to learn to accept bad covers.

[Taltos]

Not exactly the cover, but the back cover text almost made me not to buy a book from one of my favorite writers. It was that bad, but I thought for a minute and decided to give it a try - and the book turned out to be excellent.

[Reading_fanatic]

I don't tend to look at book covers (Except the writing on the back) so unless they are exceptionally bad I really don't care what the art is.

[Damiynn]

Ok everybody has made comments about the blurbs on the backs of bad books so here is what the back of mine reads

Twenty years ago a murder was committed in the fourteen Kingdoms of Kallamar, in which the King, Queen and their entire court were slaughtered

Now the fourteen Kingdoms are under the rule of a regent and on the verge of a civil war between east and west. After a failed assassination, a young battlemage named Damien Daverge is told by the rebelling Highlords that "he" is the rightful ruler of the Kingdoms.

Damien has only a few weeks to find a way to prove that he is indeed the true and rightful ruler, before his cousin comes of age and takes the throne and crown for himself. He must travel to the home of the gods, survive the dragon guarding the rings that will either kill him or name him King.

He also must do this before the forgotten exile of the Elvynn master who once ruled the world ends, and they return to reclaim the slaves that were once theirs.

[j. d. worthington]

Damiynn: I'm not sure why you posted that, actually. But --at risk of offending, which is not what I intend -- that sort of synopsis would not make me want to buy the book. I'm sorry, but it sounds too trite and formulaic... almost a "by-the-numbers" sort of thing. It just really sounds like every cliché in every bad fantasy book I've ever heard of mashed together.

I rather doubt that's the sort of writer you are, in which case such a thing on the back of your book isn't likely to make you any happier, either. Unfortunately, we live in a time perhaps especially prone to the pulpish or (if you wish to take it further back) penny-dreadful approach to writing. Everything is in superlatives, everything has to be described in the most extreme terms, everything has to be presented as if it's a music video aimed at captivating five-year-olds with severe attention deficit disorder. And nothing can be intriguing, nuanced, or mysterious.

This applies to so much cover art, as well. It's not that the technique is necessarily bad; often it's quite competent technically speaking. But it's so bloody uninspired (and uninspiring). Frequently it's as bad as that of the modern gothic romance novels -- what might well be called the very nadir and sum of what's wrong with commercial book art; as meretricious in its own way as simple pornography.

Which is why I seldom pay any attention to cover art as a guide to anything concerning the book -- unless it's by an artist whose work I've learned to take as an indication of what they're illustrating, which is rare. And, frankly, I'm coming to pay less and less attention to the descriptions on books, or other authors' blurbs about such books as included on or in the book, as well (again, "unless..." etc.)

Though I will say that, with especially egregious examples, I'm tempted to find the person at the publishing company responsible for choosing such work and beat them over the head with an edition de luxe of Paradise Lost with engravings by Gustave Doré.

[j. d. worthington]

*sigh* I really shouldn't post when I'm tired... At any rate, as I said, the above wasn't meant to offend, and to clarify: when I said I wasn't sure why you posted what you did, I meant simply I wasn't sure if you'd posted it as an example of bad cover blurbs or not, but ... and then went into my own reaction to it. My apologies for any confusion....

[D_Davis]

Let's put it this way.

A bad cover won't always turn me away from a book, but I am more likely to pick up a book with a nice looking cover including evocative art and design.

A great example is this:



The book is called Last Dragon. This cover is fantastic, and made me grab it.

That is not a very provacative title, and had it looked like this:



The chances of me seeking it out would be slim.

However, if it was the same book, and I already had it my hands, the typical fantasy cover wouldn't turn me away.

[flygin]

I buy most of my sf&f books based on recommendations on this site. I will browse in the bookstore, and if a cover looks cheesy or tacky, I am more likely to pass it by, and pick up something that looks more adult or tasteful.

I don't think your cover is horrible. I kind of like the dragon, but the people look computer generated. I have seen much worse. I think you need to add something to your new cover. A silhouette, or design, maybe in the same colors as the text. Or that may have been done to death already. I don't pay enough attention to these things.

I agree with jd about the blurb. It would have turned me away immediately.

[GOLLUM]

Covers can influence me but I'm usually into the content, blurbs etc... before buying. The only time I'll go after a certain cover is because I'm after a series of editions that look good on the shelf at home e.g. penguin black classic edition. and I already know if the book is any good.

[Nesacat]

I was talking about this to JD last night and it occurred to me that what really gets me is titles; more than the cover since often all you see is the spine of the book. At least here it is so. Very rarely are the books displayed with the cover facing browsers.

One of my favourite books, Shadow of the Wind, for example, has the most appalling cover for the US paperback edition. It's just stripes running diagonally across the cover. Says nothing at all about the book.

The title however is attractive, at least to me. Shadow of the Wind. The same goes for Clark Ashton Smith's City of the Singing Flame or Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and House of Dr Dee. My copy of The Blade Itself has a very uninspiring cover and so does it's sequel but the titles are very, very intriguing.

Like GOLLUM I sometimes buy particular editions because they match others that I already have and other times I might love a particular book so much, I buy several editions and versions of the tale. AN example here would be Beauty & The Beast.

[Taltos]

Originally Posted by Nesacat

Like GOLLUM I sometimes buy particular editions because they match others that I already have and other times I might love a particular book so much, I buy several editions and versions of the tale. AN example here would be Beauty & The Beast.

I'd be with Nesa and GOLLUM on this one - only if there was a possibility to choose When you are mostly ordering the books from store you only see the resulting book - so thats why I now have 5 of the Dresden books with English covers and 3 with American covers not a pretty picture in the bookshelf.

And more about the book covers -
I was pleasantly surprised with the covers of Brust Dzur and Lynch Lamora - where a part of the cover was relief not flat paper. Although these will be hard to keep in tact, especially if you have as little shelf space as I do.

[Caibaxx]

I found this while lurking around here last night. I tend to find myself searching for certain cover artists sometimes. Some of them it seems have even read the book and took from that a scene to write the covers. I also find myself staying away from the cheaper looking covers and that probably costs me a lot of good reads. Maybe though I might give yours a try, Damien, unlike an earlier post, I liked what the back read and that would draw me to it. It will probably be the only cheaper looking cover that I will buy for the next ten years thought.