Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: Nessa on February 08, 2007, 05:34:17 PM
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see it here: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1504 (http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1504)
Check it out! It's a great article and I think the things he has to say are very interesting.
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I have a lot to say about this article and I'm just wondering when I'll have time to write a full commentary.
I really want to take an ethnographic assessment of the covers chosen by CtrlZed.
I'm also curious about what sort of biases CtrlZed is basing his comments on. Some are apparent in the article, but there are some others I'm wondering about such as opinions about formalism, functionalism, expressionism, or abstraction.
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I enjoyed reading this article very much--I liked CtrlZed's sense of humor, and it was interesting to hear his opinion. I second him on Garth Nix's books--I think the covers are beautiful. I'm not an artist, but an appreciator of art. I don't usually have a reason why I like something--if it speaks to me, I like it. If it doesn't, I don't.
I do want to point out that the link from the article to the forum, at the end of the article, wasn't working when I tried to use it just now.
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42,
It's true that I didn't go into the actual style of the artwork on the covers at all. The post was getting long enough as it was! It's interesting to me how the actual art style on science fiction and fantasy covers has changed over time. When I started reading these books, the artwork was always very realistic, the paintings rendered with precise brushstrokes and airbrushed backgrounds--think Larry Elmore and Michael Whelan.
The industry has changed for the better, I think--with no disprespect to Elmore or Whelan. We're seeing more impressionistic covers. An example of this is the Ender's Game cover and the Old Man's War cover. These are painted by the same artist, some twenty years apart. The Ender's Game artwork is very crisp and realistic, while the Old Man's War cover is more impressionistic. I see the same thing happening in fantasy--Giancola and Foster are much more loose in their painting styles than Elmore and Whelan ever were.
As for the ethnographic-ness of the covers, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean the ethnicities that are portrayed on the covers? Could you clarify? I just chose covers that jump out to me, either good or bad, and of course my tastes will be biased because of experience and preference--but I wouldn't call this a conscious bias. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
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I do want to point out that the link from the article to the forum, at the end of the article, wasn't working when I tried to use it just now.
Fixed it.
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The reason why the covers of the Abhorsen trilogies are so good is because they're illustrated by Caldecott medal-winning artists Leo and Diane Dillon.
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That always helps, I'm sure. ;-) Great article, Zed--I really enjoyed reading it.
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The art is the strong point of the YA covers for the Garth Nix books. The more I look at the "adult" covers for that same series, the more I want to pull them from the good category and put them in the mediocre.
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Actually, I also love the adult covers. They're good for a different reason. The graphic of the mark is so strong. I just think that the Dillons' art is stronger for that particular book. But a lot of people, like you said, view art on the cover as less grown up, so there's a nice alternative in the graphic-oriented cover.
Incidentally, I'm curious what you might say about the Hallowmere cover: http://slwhitman.livejournal.com/16778.html. The final cover is just a little tweaked--her eye is a little spookier, because the left pupil of the main character is larger than that of her right eye.
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Like you said, the adult covers have a really nice graphic style going for them. And I love the symbols. It might be that the Garth Nix logo is a little distracting--even if it is really cool. When I buy these, I think I'll be getting the YA covers.
Hallowmere. What a cool name! I think the design is lovely, and I'm not just saying that. Although the name of the author is a little small. But I'm assuming that Hallowemere is the name of the world, so the smaller author's name is somewhat standard in shared-world projects (from what I've seen).
My hope for this cover is that the lettering is embossed and UVed, while the rest of the book is covered with the matte UV. That would make for one slick book (pun unintended). Certainly nails creepy YA for me. And I love creepy. I might even pick this one up.
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While it will be shared-world, the author on the cover is the creator of the series, too. This is her first book, and covers tend to emphasize the world name before author on first books.
While this is going to be a shared world, it's a little different than your average. Tiffany is the creator of the world, and she's doing the foundation trilogy, then books 7 and 10 of a ten-book series. Each of the other books in the series will be from a different girl's point of view, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce new voices.
And you *should* pick it up! (When it's available in Sept., though if you drop by LTUE, you might be able to win one of the ARCs I'm bringing with me.) It's GOOD. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the editor. Or, well, I am. Because I wouldn't have chosen her if it wasn't. :)
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None of the images are loading for me. :-\
[Now they are. Site must've been down]
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I love the cover for Hallowmere. I love the color contrast between the face and the rest of the cover. I don't know how else to put it, sorry, I am not always great with words. That could be why I don't write ;) That and a decided lack of imagination, lol.
CtrlZed, I really appreciated, and frankly mostly agreed with, your article about the cover art. Thank you.
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Excellent article.
I'm not thrilled with the Hallowmere cover, actually, because every time I see it I think it's an Eberron supplement. Did they have the same designer?
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No, different designer. (Trish Yochum, to be exact--Lisa somebody did the Eberron Player's Guide I have here at my desk.) You might want to hold it up next to a YA title and see what you think--you're coming from a different perspective which few of our intended audience (teen girls) will be familiar with.
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There's a lot of really good cover design coming from small presses -- Aio Books, Prime, etc.
Also Orb (within Tor) has some really nice designs. I wonder how separate they are from Tor?
MattD
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Hey Matt, Orb is an imprint of Tor, a part of Tom Doherty & Associates, which is in turn owned by Holtzbrink. The cool thing about Orb is that Tor set it up mainly as a way to keep the classics of speculative fiction in print. So they produce trade paperbacks (not mass market) of much loved books.
Now, I was *going* to paste in the FAQs url for Tor. But when I clicked on my Tor bookmark, I got directed to their new site. Whoohoo! :D I love surprises like that. Let's see... here's a quote about their Orb imprint: "Collector-quality trade paperback reprint editions of award-winning and noteworthy works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror."
Anyway, stumbling upon the new site is pretty awesome. If anyone's ever visited their site in the past couple years, you know that new stuff is hardly ever added. And now they've redone the whole thing! I wonder if the Nielsen Hayden's were involved in this one too?
Oh, a free newsletter! Sweet. Links to blogs for authors, artists, staff members, and other interesting sites. (Hmm, Brandon's sites aren't on there. Well, guess he'd better call up Moshe and ask about that.) Anyhoo, must go browse a bit more!
new url: http://www.tor-forge.com/
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I agree, the new Tor website is very nice. The focus is where it should be: on the books.
Re: Orb, thanks Shrain for the info. I guess what I was wondering is whether Orb has its own marketing and design staff, or whether they use Tor's?
MattD
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Yeah, but since when did Tor start publishing Harlequinn Romance books?
http://www.tor-forge.com/islandheat
So I'm sure that some authors wirte these kinds of books in "Fantasy" worlds, but the least they can do is keep the gratuitous love scene off of the cover of the books. Is Tor just trying to break into the 50% market share that the Romance genre cerrently owns? Can you say "sellout"? What a travesty.
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I love the term "sellout." Because it implies people sell stuff for reasons *other* than making money.
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There's a lot of money to be made there so why wouldn't a rational company not want to try their hand in it?
I find opinion's like Dan_gaidin's disturbing since it's more or less "how dare they do something that I don't like" and the term sellout is very arrogant or demeaning and states the person saying it is better then others or superior and that is the same attitude that non-fantasy/sci-fi fiction writers have towards fantasy and sci-fi as well as people like Terry Goodkind.
If you don't like something that's fine, but don't start demeaning others because they do or saying the genre has no merit or you justify those that say the same thing about what you read.
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Well... I obviously tweaked someone's nerves here. I really didn't mean to. If I had wanted to be demeaning, I could have been. So, I think the whole repentance call was a bit much. I really don't see myself as some high-handed control freak that wants everyone to do things "my way". Neither was I overly bent on showing myself as superior to any other party. I am, however, a fantasy and sci-fi reader and I expect a publisher to realize that. If I wanted to read a romance novel, then I'd buy a romance novel. But I don't read romance. I want to see fantasy and sci-fi. And yes, I know that there is going to be some overlap. That's to be expected. There is a major difference, however, between a fantasy novel with some romance in it, and a romance novel with some fantasy in it. If they want to try their hand in a new genre with a romance novel set in a fantasy world, fine! be my guest! Just don't market it as a fantasy book. Market it as a romance. Now, maybe the wording of my opinion that I have just shared here and the (obviously individually understood) meaning of what I posted earlier might be a tad different. Ever say something with a little more gusto than usual to get people to respond to you? I'd be the first to say yes. So, I apologize if my moment of gusto made me "disturbing" to you Sprig. Guess I need to do some more homework on the English language before I go bandying it about in such a reckless manner again. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how radically different people's responses to a single word can be.
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Actually, Dan, I don't think you're the target for paranormal romance. That side of Tor's business is more aimed at women, from what I can tell--they're trying to bring in romance readers to fantasy (and with romance being 50% of the whole fiction market sales, you can imagine why they'd like to capture that market too--and most of those romance readers are women). There's still plenty of regular fantasy and science fiction to go around for those whose preferences run more in your line of thinking. They're not changing that, as far as I can see--simply expanding their audience with a new imprint with a new focus. Not really a sellout so much as serving an underserved audience.
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Dan_gaidin, Sprig is easily annoyed/riled. Don't take it personally.
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Don't take this as antagonistic, but your original post, using the word "sellout", was pretty contentious. I haven't ever heard it used in a non-condescending manner. So yeah, while you may be passive aggressive with the needing "to do some more homework on the English language before I go bandying it about in such a reckless manner again," it's not like anyone had a very strange reaction to your word choice.
If they want to try their hand in a new genre with a romance novel set in a fantasy world, fine! be my guest! Just don't market it as a fantasy book. Market it as a romance.
See, the thing is, the very fact that we're having this discussion indicates that they *are* marketing it as a romance. Isn't the article this thread is based on about how covers target certain things? The cover in question DEFINITELY is targeting a certain group. That group isn't you. But it does make clear which group they think will like it.
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Okay,
So there's definitely a HUGE difference between the old Tor website and the new one. Based on the old one, I was under the impression that Tor wasn't into general Fiction or other arenas (just fantasy and sci-fi). This new webiste is definitely 100% better than the last one. So, I saw this romance cover on the enw site and it just about killed me because it looked underhanded. Now that I've gone back and actually run through their website, it's obvious that they're keeping things separate, which I appreciate. To me it smaked too much of the whole Terry Goodkind mess where he thinks that fantasy readers are stupid and he is just using the genre to pander his philocophical ideals -- trying to give the impression of one thing while really having his thrust elsewhere. In this case, it looked as if (from my perspective) they were trying to sell a fantasy book with a "romantic" cover. That was what bothered me mostly -- the seeming deception -- and thus my initial violent reaction to a limited initial amount of research.
And nothing taken personally here. This is, after all, just a message board and I recognize the limited amount of authored meaning, and copious amounts of reader understanding, that is inherent in this type of communication. Thanks for the reponses. Sorry for the mess.
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Hum..about time Tor actually updated anything with their website, you're right it's a lot better then before but it's still lacking in a lot of ways.
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I'd love to hear in what ways you think it's lacking, Sprig. I'm always interested in hearing that sort of thing about publishing sites--always on the lookout for good ideas. :)
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Sure, I'll do a write-up (in a different thread) later on this week once I've had the time to thoroughly examine the site, though most of my complaints are layout, function and organization (labeling) related.
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Writeup done, 6 pages without resources, references, ect 12 pages with. The two files are attached to this post, if people want to discuss it make a new thread, I'm too tired to do so.
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Cool idea, Sprigg. I look forward to your "take" on the new Tor site.
Edit: Did you create another thread for this yet?
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nope.
And I'm not going to redesign the Tor site, but to offer suggestions to the problems I found, You can just download the files in my previous post (they're attached) if you want to read what I had to say.
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How well did you do on the paper, if I may ask? (I've only read part of it so far, but it looks very informative so far.)
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Will find out Monday,we were supposed to get them back today but the teacher held them back to expand upon the comments since the class has yet to write a paper along the lines he wants. He gives requirements but then wants the papers to flow a certain way and he's never happy about that part--which I think he's being too picky on. But I've had this teacher before and have yet to get lower then a B+ on any assignment so I'm really not that worried, then again he knows that every paper I turn in is a first draft and that annoys him some since he's the type that does 5 or 6 rewrites for anything. I'm not I write it once, sometimes send it to EUOL or Fell for proofing and then I'm done unless there's a major flow problem, and am done with it. If I didn't want to write something the way I did the first time I wouldn't have done it that way, it's usually just grammar that I need to change, which I didn't get to do for this paper (but this teacher doesn't grade on grammar so I don't really worry about it).
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Well, I've finished it, and you make some good points especially about organization. Thanks for letting us see it. Gives me some ideas.
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Finally got this paper back got a B+ ,for those that asked, because I forgot it include (even though I used it) a silly navigation checklist that's really not all that good--one of the items you have to check off is if the links are "blue" because if they're not it's a mark against the website (yes I've debated this with the teacher). Anyway I have to do part 2 today (due Friday) and I'm not sure if I'm going to use the same site (don't need to but I can) and this paper needs to cover "Patterns of information" or Information Design as some would call it.
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Congrats! A B+ is still pretty good, especially when you disagree with the teachers rubric.
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Karen asked last night--why do the Wheel of Time books have such crappy cover art, when surely they can afford something better.
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Because that's what the first book had, so that's what they all have, because that's what fans' are looking for. Farland's books have the same crappy style and art, and it was almost certainly an intentional move to try to look like a "Jordan-style Wheel of Time book." The resemblance alone, crappy though it may be, probably accounts for a third of that series' sales.
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Part 2 is done and attached (we really should have a seperate thread, but oh well..)