If you read SFF blogs and/or frequent genre message boards, you are aware that Paul Young's cover art for Sam Sykes' Black Halo (Canada, USA, Europe), the upcoming second volume in The Aeons' Gate series, has not been met with widespread enthusiasm.
Okay, so I'm not going to lie and say that I love the cover. But it does follow the style of Tome of the Undergates (Canada, USA, Europe), so there is visual continuity. Which, I reckon, means that the first volume was not so bad as to make everyone laying eyes upon the book puke. If Tome of the Undergates had been a disaster, then perhaps both Gollancz and Pyr would have attempted a different strategy.
Let's not forget that as a marketing tool, a cover's purpose is to draw the attention of potential customers as they browse the SFF section of their bookstore. There is no recipe for success, or else someone like Irene Gallo from Tor Books would have bottled it and sold it, and every single SFF book cover would henceforth rock. And she would be a millionaire! Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. For better or worse, cover art is often a hit-or-miss kind of thing.
Far be it from me to try to sing the praise of the Black Halo cover art. There are quite a few things I find more than a little off-putting, sure. Not the least of which being the poor man's Fabio taking center stage. But it would be well nigh impossible for anyone to walk down the aisle and not have their gaze drawn by such a cover. Say what you will about it, but Paul Young's cover art unmistakably catches the eye. For all the wrong reasons, some would opine, yet that's neither here nor there. If the cover draws someone's attention, its job is done. For you see, regardless of the fact that the cover is awesome or god-awful, if it manages to get a customer to pick up the book, it's mission accomplished for the art department.
Then it's up to the cover blurb and the quotes to entice the reader to flip through the novel's pages. That's the editorial and publicity and marketing departments' job.
And then it's up to Sam Sykes' storytelling skills to work its magic. Sykes could be the next Dickens or Hemingway, but if the cover doesn't catch the eye of customers browsing around, what with the multitudes of other works visually clamoring for their attention, it doesn't matter how good or bad Sam Sykes or any other author is. If they don't pick up the book in the first place, the rest is moot. . .
Whether you love it or hate it, Paul Young's cover art does the job.
Okay, so I'm not going to lie and say that I love the cover. But it does follow the style of Tome of the Undergates (Canada, USA, Europe), so there is visual continuity. Which, I reckon, means that the first volume was not so bad as to make everyone laying eyes upon the book puke. If Tome of the Undergates had been a disaster, then perhaps both Gollancz and Pyr would have attempted a different strategy.
Let's not forget that as a marketing tool, a cover's purpose is to draw the attention of potential customers as they browse the SFF section of their bookstore. There is no recipe for success, or else someone like Irene Gallo from Tor Books would have bottled it and sold it, and every single SFF book cover would henceforth rock. And she would be a millionaire! Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. For better or worse, cover art is often a hit-or-miss kind of thing.
Far be it from me to try to sing the praise of the Black Halo cover art. There are quite a few things I find more than a little off-putting, sure. Not the least of which being the poor man's Fabio taking center stage. But it would be well nigh impossible for anyone to walk down the aisle and not have their gaze drawn by such a cover. Say what you will about it, but Paul Young's cover art unmistakably catches the eye. For all the wrong reasons, some would opine, yet that's neither here nor there. If the cover draws someone's attention, its job is done. For you see, regardless of the fact that the cover is awesome or god-awful, if it manages to get a customer to pick up the book, it's mission accomplished for the art department.
Then it's up to the cover blurb and the quotes to entice the reader to flip through the novel's pages. That's the editorial and publicity and marketing departments' job.
And then it's up to Sam Sykes' storytelling skills to work its magic. Sykes could be the next Dickens or Hemingway, but if the cover doesn't catch the eye of customers browsing around, what with the multitudes of other works visually clamoring for their attention, it doesn't matter how good or bad Sam Sykes or any other author is. If they don't pick up the book in the first place, the rest is moot. . .
Whether you love it or hate it, Paul Young's cover art does the job.
9 commentaires:
I would agree that this cover does catch my eye, but it would never convince me to buy it if I knew nothing about it. It just bears too much in common with the covers of your average romance novels, with their hastily-shopped photographs.
I'd never say that the covers reflect on the author, because they don't (read some of TotU and liked what I saw), but they certainly do him a disservice.
I wouldn't buy it. I know it is popular to have the MC posing face out to the audience, but I really dislike it. I prefer a realistic, awesome scene from the book, with the characters simply being a part of the scene.
It's horrible beyond belief! If I wanted to read that book, the first thing I would do is check if it is available in another edition with another cover.
I'd be ashamed to have that in my bookshelf.
It's the reason I haven't bought Charles Stross' Saturn's Children. That cover is too awful!
I think there are more people than me that wouldn't buy that crap, so they are in fact loosing business because of the covers.
I don't give two craps about what's on the cover. Some are good, some are bad. I've got books I've re-read a dozen times whose cover I couldn't pick out of a lineup.
It's not about buying the book because of the cover. It's about drawing your attention. The cover art is just one of the things that factor in when one purchases a novel.
Usually, it's more about the blurb, the quotes, and a brief flip through.
I guess that's ship rigging, but at a glance it looks like two skyscrapers rising behind him, burning in flames, and you know that makes people think about.
Turn the dude so he faces the fire, silhouette him a bit more, and tilt the camera up to give it some dimension. THAT would give you a cool cover you wouldn't be embarrassed to read at Starbucks.
That cover would catch my eye, but then I wouldn't want to touch it. So job definitely failed.
its cheesy, sure but i've seen dozens of YA novels with covers crappier than that.
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