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Video review of the covers of my books. Pretty hilarious, actually.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQLTeq...
Ta, L.
...People are reviewing books by making little vids, now? Shows how far behind the curve I am...
...although my luck with packaging does assure that my audience consists entirely of independent-minded people who don't judge books by their covers, which is not all bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQLTeq...
Ta, L.
...People are reviewing books by making little vids, now? Shows how far behind the curve I am...
...although my luck with packaging does assure that my audience consists entirely of independent-minded people who don't judge books by their covers, which is not all bad.
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Micki
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Jun 24, 2013 02:56AM
Can you imagine what would have happened if chick-lit artists had gotten ahold of The Warrior's Apprentice? (-: I wouldn't mind seeing that. Although, Barrayar would be the most excellent chick-lit cover ever. A nice shopping bag next to some high-heeled boots on a subway/transport.
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I quite enjoy your books, covers aside, and find the narrative unique and refreshing. Characters. with real human depth in a SF setting.. Can't go wrong.
Oh yes, it's very funny! The german one is... incredible! Poor Miles...But science-fiction's covers are very often quite ugly. I don't know why, it's a shame. On the other hand, the cover of “The sharing knife”’s books are beautiful and accurate. And perhaps no so accurate (because more romantic-romantic than romantic-pragmatic) but wonderful (I love the illustrator, Amandine Labarre) is the french cover of "Beguilement": http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37...
Milabette wrote: "Oh yes, it's very funny! The german one is... incredible! Poor Miles...But science-fiction's covers are very often quite ugly. I don't know why, it's a shame. On the other hand, the cover of “The ..."
Oh, yes, those French covers are quite fine. (And very French.) Curiously, HarperCollins swapped out the original Julie Bell Sharing Knife covers for more generic graphic ones on the last reprint. Sales experiment, I gather. I doubt it was very revealing, since any paperback packaging experiment at the moment is likely to have been swamped by the impact of e-books on the mass-market market.
Ta, L.
Khaalidah wrote: "I quite enjoy your books, covers aside, and find the narrative unique and refreshing. Characters. with real human depth in a SF setting.. Can't go wrong."Thanks!
Ta, L.
Micki wrote: "Can you imagine what would have happened if chick-lit artists had gotten ahold of The Warrior's Apprentice? (-: I wouldn't mind seeing that. Although, Barrayar would be the most excellent chick-lit..."Heh.
L.
My much beloved and battered copy had yet another cover - the one with the woman in red (Elena?) draped over ?Baz, while Miles (actually a reasonable image) observes wryly from his seat. I never paid it much mind, frankly. Covers are so far out of writers' control that they barely hint at content. I liked the cover of Paladin of Souls, but all a book really has to have in this case is the author's name on it. A video review of covers isn't about the book content, but about the conscientiousness, talent, and weird quirks of cover artists.
I wonder if anyone should tell this fellow that the "guy" getting suited up in the NESFA cover is supposed to be Elena...? (And the figure on the left, Miles.) Or whether that would just dismay him more...*Snrch*, L.
(That said, I always did like the Baen cover for Memory.)
Kaje wrote: "My much beloved and battered copy had yet another cover - the one with the woman in red (Elena?) draped over ?Baz, while Miles (actually a reasonable image) observes wryly from his seat. I never p..."Oh, yes. The infamous "battle nightie" cover.
That was very early in my career. Baen had this big wrap cover painting left over in stock that had been rejected for, iirc, a Keith Laumer novel. In the original painting, the command chair was empty. So to recycle it, they sent it back to the artist to paint in a Miles-figure sitting down in the command chair (which also had the sales-image advantage of disguising his height.) The unfortunate uniform choice dogged my career for years...
Sigh. And yet I and my career seem to have survived. If one looks back over a lot of classic SF novels from the past, many of them had dire original covers as well. So I guess it's just a part of paying one's dues in this field.
Ta, L.
I think there's a law of very rapidly diminishing returns in saying anything to someone that, um, taken with his own theories. That Memory cover is good. I also love the Baen cover for The Vor Game - the expressions are perfect and for once it all fits pretty well.
Lois wrote: "I wonder if anyone should tell this fellow that the "guy" getting suited up in the NESFA cover is supposed to be Elena...? (And the figure on the left, Miles.) Or whether that would just dismay h..."That would be a good explanation: I was just thinking that the face of the person in the suit was really feminine - and Miles's isn't at all! He's short, for sure, but absolutly manly. Hurmf.
Some of my covers aren't pretty, but give the right impressions of the characters, and I like to look at them: these ones, for instance:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76...
Of course, Miles is sitting in the first, and we can only see his head on the second...
It's true that except for some nice starscapes and space ships, SF covers are usually awful. Now that I'm nearing 50 I mistrust them and read many more reviews (the Web helps!); but when I was younger and getting my book mainly based on what I found on a bookstore or library's shelves, I was put off by many an ugly cover in the SF section. Some books took me years to try and in fact it was only based on personal recommendations that I started reading the Vorkosigan saga back in 1999.
Milabette wrote: "Some of my covers aren't pretty, but give the right impressions of the characters, and I like to look at them: ..."The Cetaganda cover is great.
Who buys books by browsing covers anymore? I live in a very large city and it is 10 miles to the nearest bookstore and that one is at UCLA. I wonder how book cover art will change to work better in it's online version. Has it already? One way that I think would work nice for an established series like this (which hardly needs to have a cover to sell) would be to crowd source it to the fans.
Nancy wrote: "Who buys books by browsing covers anymore? I live in a very large city and it is 10 miles to the nearest bookstore and that one is at UCLA. I wonder how book cover art will change to work better in..."You're right; we shouldn't choose a book for its cover. But I must confess that if I read blindly the new books of my favorites author (and Lois' are!) and those that readers with same taste as mine had appreciated, when I'm just looking around, frolicking on internet (as I mostly read in english and live in France I rarely buy books in shops anymore) the first thing that makes me slow and have a look at a book is the cover. Maybe because I have an interest in illustrations, paintings, drawings? And sometimes, as in the video, I just stop because the cover is so bad, or so silly that I'm curious to see the insides of the book!
On the other hand, titles do nothing to get my attention, they don't bother me, but I also frequently forgot them: it's, most of the time, just a manner to point the right book.
I’m often wondering if authors have as little to say for the choice of the name of their books as for the illustrations…
Milabette wrote: "I’m often wondering if authors have as little to say for the choice of the name of their books as for the illustrations… "And for the choice of the titles when translated into different languages!
Nancy wrote: "Milabette wrote: "I’m often wondering if authors have as little to say for the choice of the name of their books as for the illustrations… "And for the choice of the titles when translated into di..."
And even the choice of translation of some names of the story!
In the Sharing Knife the nickname of Fawn, which is Spark, has been translate in "Etincelle" in french. Well, that's the literal translation, for sure. But the huge problem is that “Etincelle” rings rather silly, in a Disney Tinker Bell's way. "Spark" is quite different: it's sharp, like a dog's name, it converts a sense of brilliancy, sharpness of intellect, reactivity in adversity: it’s the real personality of Fawn! "Etincelle" gives an impression of someone sweet, pretty, decorative - but never clever. It's a very bad choice, it gives a silliness to the relation between Dag and Fawn!
It's criminal… :3
The whole idea of a translation of an author's work feels like a scary thing - someone taking your words and transforming the story in ways you can't possibly appreciate properly. Lois's nuanced use of language is such an integral part of the stories - having someone else deciding whether the time you used "apprehensive" should be translated as "worried" or "scared" or "nervous"... I'm impressed by authors who can step back enough from their stories to survive translations, frankly. Names are just a tiny part of it.
Is this the "battle nightie" cover that you are talking about?http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/5...
I noticed that one a while back, and it made me giggle. I failed to guess, however, which characters any of those people were supposed to represent. :)
NibbledToDeathByCats wrote: "Is this the "battle nightie" cover that you are talking about?http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/5...
I noticed that one a while back, and it made me giggle. I faile..."
Yep, that would be the one.
I sometimes wonder how my career ever survived.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: "I sometimes wonder how my career ever survived...."Other authors with bad covers can take heart from this, though. Covers matter, but the writing and story can shine through. Admittedly, one of the least practical-looking ship's bridges I've ever seen, nightie aside.
Lois thank you for posting this. I needed a good laugh. You have had your lion's share of bad covers it seems. Do find that Rish on the back of CVA looks a little like Wesley Snipes in body paint and drag?
Jenn wrote: "Lois thank you for posting this. I needed a good laugh. You have had your lion's share of bad covers it seems. Do find that Rish on the back of CVA looks a little like Wesley Snipes in body pai..."
Rish looks remarkably like Rish in that painting, I think, pretty much exactly as she was described in the book. (Well, the haircut is a bit too brushy.)
Ivan isn't handsome enough (and his uniform isn't a proper forest green), but the attitude is right, and I suspect the artist was trying to differentiate him from all the Flandry covers he'd just painted for Baen.
http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.as...
If the Captain Flandry image was only a bit more befuddled and feckless in expression, he'd be a good ringer for Ivan. But I suppose one wouldn't want readers mistaking the one series for the other.
Ta, L.
Lois, I really enjoy your books, although I must admit that the covers usually make me laugh. I think my favourite visualization of the Vorkosigan Saga actually isn't even a cover--it's a piece of fanart I ran across, I think of Gregor from the Vor Game: 
(link to original: http://fav.me/d382sl8)
It beats out the cover on my copy:
I still can't tell if those are both supposed to be Miles, but I'm quite positive that their expressions terrify me.
Carly wrote: "Lois, I really enjoy your books, although I must admit that the covers usually make me laugh. I think my favourite visualization of the Vorkosigan Saga actually isn't even a cover--it's a piece of ..."I love this image! Thank you for pointing us to it.
Yes, like I said, crowd source the cover art to the fans and let the author make the final selection. With such a large fan base, there are sure to be many talented artists who can do the story justice.
Thanks Nibbled, I was wondering about the infamous cover ! I love the way their sway their hips... ^_^And thank you, too, Carly, this drawing is beautiful ; of Gregor ? I like very much Gregor, I would have love to read a book especially about him...
And the other cover is (again, sorry) really funny. But then, it does attract the attention, the composition of the illustration is good, the colors plentiful... you can't ignore it !
I was first introduced to video reviews by this young gentleman:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253V...
Thankfully he prevented me from wasting my time on a book that would likely have resulted in an aneurism.
THANK YOU for writing exciting, wonderful works that don't make me feel like I'm killing off brain cells.
