O Frabjous day! Nightborn Advanced Reader Copies have arrived!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I found a package in my carport and opened it to find a box of Nightborn (Thrones and Bones 2) arcs and the cover flat. Look at this gorgeousity (art by Justin Gerard, design by Ken Crossland). Oh what a beamish boy am I!

ArtOrder's Latest "Ask the Art Director" series

Another great post by Jon Schindehette in his ArtOrder "Ask the Art Director" series. This one asks, "Can I Be a Cover Artist?" Great responses from artist Todd Lockwood, Tor Art Director Irene Gallo, Wizards of the Coast's Kate Irwin, illustrator Ralph Horsley, CthulhuTech Art Director Mike Vaillancourt, and Yours Truly. For anyone interested in illustration, not just those looking for a career in it, the post is well worth checking out.

Urban Fantasy Book Cover Parade

Thanks to Cyril van der Haegen for pointing this out:

Matte vs Gloss

Earlier this week, a Canadian bookseller and blogger published "An Open Letter to Trade Publishers," opining that the use of gloss finishes on trade paperback books caused some shoppers to mistakenly assume these titles were self published efforts from vanity press. She writes:

"Dear Trade Publisher or Small Press publisher:

Please do not print trade paperback large format books with flat glossy covers anymore.

As a bookseller, I watch what people pick up and put down. I listen to their comments on covers and cover art (and blurbs; those are sometimes funny, and yes, I know full well that the authors don't write them).

One thing that I've noticed happening more and more often in the store when people are browsing and chatting in front of the New Release Trade paperback shelf is that a customer will point at a specific book and say:

"Is this self-published?"

or

"Wow, there are a lot of self-published books here."

In fact, none of the books at which they're pointing are self-published"

She then singled out our own recent release, Diving Into the Wreck, specifically, saying:

"The British trades are frequently bound with glossy stock. This week, there were two novels by relatively unknown names -- and the new Pyr title by Kristine Kathryn Rusch -- which were pointed out, and which were instantly classified as "self-published" (the latter, I've had four people ask about in the last two weeks)."

This has caused some huge discussion at the site itself, on my Facebook page, on Twitter, on John Picacio's Facebook page, and in the numerous emails I've been getting from people who have stumbled across it.

A follow up post appeared the next day, it which she very kindly added:

"Let me be even clearer: 

I admire Pyr and its publication choices greatly. I think some of the best, if not the best, SF being published in North America is being published by Pyr books. I am not in any way saying the books look or are unprofessional to me.

I'm saying that the cover-stock, which is in some ways more durable than other finishes ... is causing consumer confusion in my experience."

Now, let me say right off the bat that I'm not upset about the first post, I appreciate the spirit in which it is offered as well as the information it contains, and I certainly appreciate the nice things she says in the second one. Furthermore, this is feedback, this is a data point, and as someone who wants to connect the most books with the most readers, I am happy to and obligated to consider all data points. Anything that gets more books into your hands is a good thing. Any potential impediment to that must be considered and evaluated.


A lot of what resulted was people coming down pro or anti-matte. There was a lot of good feedback. And also the point raised, most eloquently by Bruce Arthurs that:

"What bothers me about this is that you're asking professional publishers to limit their options....The 'tells' I generally see to distinguish self-published from professional books aren't the glossiness of the cover stock. Poor cover art, and clunky typography and layout are a much greater factor. They're not always 'bad,' but they're almost always 'off.'"

Now, another interesting factor. It was quickly pointed out that the author of the post is Canadian, and that, due to the generous subsidies and grants that the Canadian government provides for writers (and that I wish the US government would too) there are a lot of self published books in bookstores in Canada due to big government artist subsidies. While this particularly bookseller stressed their store did not stock vanity press titles, it may nonetheless be that there is a particular  suspicion of and sensitivity towards self-publishing among Canadian shoppers.

So there is a degree to which I think this may not be as relevant to the American market as it is to the Canadian one. 


The other factor that needs discussing is that this is not a discussion of quality but of perception. The matte covers being advocated here frequently curl, scratch horribly, are generally less durable, and, most crucial in my opinion, dull and blunt the artwork. We had a situation once where a blogger criticizes our paper stock, saying it didn't look like the other books on his shelf. We contacted them, asking them to specify examples of which paper they preferred. It turned out they liked the really low-end, low-weight, see through, cheap paper generally reserved for mass market books and now sadly starting to creep into some trade paperback and even (horribly!) to some hardcovers as a cost cutting measure. The fact that our paper was thicker, creamier, more durable and way more expensive was seen as a bad thing.

As John Picacio elegantly put it:

"If someone thinks McDonald's burgers are the best burgers ever, and the way burgers should be made, and then they go to Peter Lugar's in NYC, and hate the gourmet burgers because they aren't like the 'major chain,' then does that mean Peter Lugar's should make their burgers like McDonald's?"

Hell no. So there's a very real degree to which I am unwilling to make our books look cheaper, less durable, and, well, uglier if that's what it takes to "blend in." When I select a manuscript for a Pyr book, I want it to be something you will love, and want to read over and over, and I want it packaged beautifully in something that will last.

But, again, it's a data point. If the perception exists among US shoppers, which is where the majority of our books are sold (us being a US publisher), then I need to address it.


So, yesterday, I went to  Barnes & Noble to get some more data points. I started in the As and went to the Zs, to see just who was publishing what in trade paperback covers with gloss finishes. The following authors were all published in this manner, and their books had no foil or embossing - just gloss finishes on trade paperbacks. This is not a complete list, not by any means; it's just as much as I could jot down on my iPhone in the five minutes I had before I had to rush home to my family. So, in gloss trade paperback we have: Douglas Adams, Terry Brooks, Stephen Brust, Octavia Butler, Orson Scott Card, Charles De Lint, Philip K Dick,  David Eddings, Terry Goodkind, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Robert Howard, Robert Jordan, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Moorcock, Jennifer Roberson, Robert Sawyer, Jonathan Strahan, TH White, Rober Zelazny. 

Looking at that list, it's hard to see how anyone browsing in an American chain store, and seeing that list of powerhouse authors published in glossy trade paperback editions, could come to the conclusion that this was a format reserved for vanity press publications. In fact, what I found was that the bigger the author was, the more likely it seemed that their trade paperback editions would receive glossy treatment. Most of the matte finished books I saw were smaller, mid-list authors. There also seemed to be more fantasy published with a gloss finish than SF (but this may be that there is more fantasy published period than SF right now).


Now, in terms of who published it: Pretty much every Del Rey, DAW, and Baen trade paperback I pulled off the shelf was a gloss. Many St. Martins, Tor, Orb, Berkely, Ace, and Roc offerings were gloss (about half of the Tor books, and again, pretty much all of their bigger authors and major releases). Interestingly enough, the only houses that seemed to favor matte finishes over gloss were Night Shade Books and Orbit, though in the case of the latter, most books I saw were matte with either embossing or foil. (Also, I forgot to look at the Lilith Saintcrow and Jennifer Rardin books from Orbit, which I seem to remember now are gloss trades. Not sure. And the Solaris books I have here at home that are in trade paperback are also gloss.)

Now, again, I'm not drawing a qualitative difference between matte verses gloss in general (though I do object to cheap, scratchy, curly matte, and I saw a lot of that).  I'm just looking to see if we were an aberration in choosing gloss finishes for the majority of our titles. And what I found was that we weren't, and if what we were publishing these days was primarily fantasy (and it is) then gloss actually seemed like the smart/accepted choice.

But it's a data point.

We're working with a number of new authors, as well as a lot of new illustrators, in 2010 and 2011. We're moving into some new (for us) subgenres, and generally shaking things up (and expanding!). So I'm going to loosen up and play with the look of some of our books in future. I trust you'll let me know how we're doing.

In the meantime, if you want to weigh in here on matte vs gloss, or what makes you pick up or put down a book, feel free to comment. I only ask that you not single out specific artists or publishers for criticism (play nice), and that you identify where in the world you are coming in from, because I'd like to hear if Americans have the same reaction to gloss finishes that this Canadian bookseller has (and, as for British book buyers, there is a very different design aesthetic in the UK verses the US). Thanks!

Wearing My Other Hat Today

Illustrator E.M.Gist interviews Yours Truly on his blog, Day of the Dead, today. This is Lou-the-de facto-art director he's talking to, not Lou-the-editorial-director. So there's some pretty covers to look at, including one making its debut, and I say erudite things like:

The best piece of advice I can give is the best advice ever given me. The very wise Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications said, You should never judge an artist by the best piece in his/her portfolio. You should judge them by their worst, because if that’s what they hand in, you’re going to have to live with it. I think this is tremendous advice for art directors. For illustrators, I suppose it means you should identify the worst piece of art in your portfolio and get rid of it! In all seriousness, I see too many portfolios that include everything going back to college, too many roughs and early works. A portfolio should reflect where you are now, not where you were five or ten years ago. Best foot forward, and only that foot!

Incidentally, that's one of my favorite examples of Gist's work you see pictured above. It's from the soon-to-be-released, highly anticipated Escape From Hell!,from Hal Duncan and published by Monkeybrain Books.

Todd Lockwood's Stormcaller, From Sketch to Finish

Over on Tor.com, art director Irene Gallo has just posted "Todd Lockwood's Stormcaller, from Sketch to Finish" a very in-depth breakdown of the evolution of the cover for our forthcoming title, The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign,by Tom Lloyd. This was my first time working with Lockwood - whose art I had admired for years - and I was blown away by the result. (He's just recently delivered the artwork for book two, btw, though that will have to wait for another day...)

Meanwhile, with quotes from Yours Truly and a LOT of commentary from Lockwood himself, and 20 different sketches, roughs and detailed close-ups, the post is well worth checking out.

The book is also well worth checking out, which you can do here.

Adventures in Lou-Casting

Me talking about cover art here on the new Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing podcast. Someone named Kelly Link also interviewed.

Feast Your Eyes...

Because I can't talk about artwork enough, here are the covers of three forthcoming Pyr books. On the left is Chris Roberson's End of the Century,as envisioned by Dan Dos Santos. (Full illustration, sans text, is here.) This is a tale of a young woman named Alice Fell, a teenage American punker who has been having visions of the London Eye all her life (and before there was such a thing), so follows her vision to the UK and falls into a conspiracy that moves through secret societies (and shadowy assailants) all the way back to the origins of the Holy Grail myth. One part urban fantasy, one part secret history, there are also odd parallels with a completely different Pyr book that was being written at the same time. No I won't say which one. But I will say this is the best thing Roberson has written thus far, and he's a damn good writer.

Then over here on the right we have Stephan Martiniere's cover for Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days, a collection of all the stories that have sprung out of the brilliantly-realized future India he crafted for River of Gods.There's a Hugo winner, a Hugo nominee and a 25k original novella here, so what's not to love, right? I don't think it's unfair to say that this is going to be a talked-about book in 09.

Then back on the left is a cover by Todd Lockwood - our first time working with Todd, who was wonderful - for a really interesting debut fantasy novel, Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller: Book One of the Twilight Reign.This is a tale of Isaak, a "white eye" - a person born with more charisma, more strength, and more anger than average people, created by the gods to be leaders of men, but limited by those gods as well, who is thrown from humble origins into courtly politics (and courtly intrigues, and, of course, killer battles replete with trolls and dragons). It's a really intricate, lush, fully-realized fantasy world, of the grim and gritty variety, a sort of Elric set loose in Middle Earth, that I am VERY excited to be releasing in the States. Todd's full cover is a wrap-around too, so this is only a taste.

More covers starting to appear on our forthcoming books page too. And here's a handy Amazon list too. Please also note that John Picacio's utterly fantastic cover for Fast Forward 2 is still being worked on, so as great as it is, it isn't final (and hence not reproduced here).

Keep on Judging Those Books

Ron Hogan of Galleycat takes a look at the US and UK covers of Charles Stross's Halting Stateand Ken MacLeod's The Execution Channel,in an article entitled "Leaving the Sci-Fi Covers Behind." Of Halting State's US vs UK packaging he says, speaking first of the US approach, that "...it's a fine enough sci-fi cover, but there's still a part of me that wonders if Orbit's approach might not more accurately reflect the novel's near-future setting and ironic humor."

He goes on to look at the very similar packaging of The Execution Channel, and opines that, "Neither Stross nor MacLeod is achieving the crossover appeal by diluting the science-fictional aspects of their work. These are both full-on SF novels... But they are also excellent technothrillers as well, which with the right momentum could easily appear on mainstream bestseller lists. Don't be surprised if subsequent novels by either author make that leap."

The post is picked up on blog Specifically Spec Fic, where Scott Edelman pops up in the comments section with this analysis: "If you can create a cover that tells a science fiction audience that the book is SF without alienating the non-SF audience who'd like the book if the symbols weren't made so explicit and if the packaging was more modern, the theory is that you'd get the best of both worlds."

I agree with that whole-heartedly, as well as Scott's further assertion that it's sometimes hard to do in practice, but I think that's what Stephan Martiniere achieves with his two covers for Ian McDonald's River of Godsand Brasyl. Or this never-before-seen cover illustration for the forthcoming McDonald collection, Cyberabad Days. I also like both covers for Halting State, and I'm not sure the US one reads as "fantasy" as much as Ron Hogan thinks. When I first saw it, it struck me as being a departure from genre covers in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on, even compared to Stross' own work at other houses. I like the UK cover as well, though at first glance I think it looks almost like a non-fiction book (not necessarily a bad thing given the content and unusual, 2nd person narrative voice). I agree it is an effective cover. (Though if I am going to pick up one of these, you know it's going to be the US edition - not because of the artwork, but because I'm very big on supporting your favorite authors in your appropriate territory. If I really had to have the UK cover, I would buy both editions, which is what I do with China Miéville's Bas Lag books.)

Meanwhile, Orbit themselves weigh in on Galleycat's debate - what they term the "Great SFF Cover Debate/War" on the Orbit blog. They say, "It’s nothing to do with where the book is being published in the world; it’s to do with the question that every genre publisher has to ask themselves: do we want our books to stand out or do we want them to fit in? Most genre publishers would say both: they want their books to stand out by looking exceptional, but they also want them to fit in by being immediately recognizable to readers of similar books within the genre. Depending on where you put the emphasis, though, the cover for a particular book can go in some very different directions."

Again, agree. I think the problem arises when you shoot so far afield for that cross-over audience that you go too far and lose the home team. Or produce something generic and bland that fails to represent the book at all. I'm not saying either of the books that Galleycat focuses on does that. Now, speaking not as an editor but as a fan and collector, I know that I am very big on "the book as artifact" and disappointed when I'm asked to shell out $25 for something that is packaged like the latest James Patterson or John Grisham. And I do believe that in a long tail economy, we need to be careful about sacrificing what makes SF&F unique (and a part of that is its century-old history of illustration). And I want to be clear that I'm not saying Orbit does that. At all.

For instance, I really like the Orbit cover of Iain M. Banks's Mattervery much, both as a readers and as an editor/art director. I find that it catches my eye every time I'm in a bookstore, which is what you want a cover to do, and the subliminal connections I get to Dune (robed figure, desert) are probably not going to hurt with US readers too. Nor does it hides its SF light under a bushel - that image reads pretty clearly as "alien world" to me. I am the kind of reader who won't buy a book if I really hate the cover; with so many books to chose from, if I'm plunking down $25 and my reading time is limited, why not get the story AND artwork I want vs the one that only offers one of the two. So on that level, this cover succeeds, as it's been tempting me to pick it up every time I'm in a store. My reading time is so precious, and I already have quite a few books on the shelf I've promised I'll read first, but I'll probably end up picking this up before the year is out, and - since I haven't read Banks since The Wasp Factory - the cover of Matter will have been a lot of the reason for that sale.

Finally, regarding the "Great SFF Cover Debate/War," guys come on! It is a debate - a fun one - and not a war. There are hundreds upon hundreds of science fiction and fantasy titles published every year, and you are spot on when you say that you begin by asking of each specific title "what it is that excites us about a particular book/series/author." With that approach, and the breadth of SF&F output, there is plenty of room for all and every approach. We need not tar every book with the same feather. The way we packaged Starship: Mercenarywasn't the same way we packaged The Blade Itself(in this case, a reuse of the UK illustration), but I'm damn proud of both final products, and both are appropriate to their individual book's contents.

And let me use that as an excuse to segue into another concern of mine. Which is if there is a "war," it's with an indifference to reading in the wider world, not between authors or publishers. With very few exceptions (Baen, DAW), SF&F readers tend to follow authors and subgenres rather than houses. So thank God you guys are publishing Matter and Ace is publishing Halting State, because I suspect there is a lot of crossover between the readers of Charles Stross and Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod and our own Ian McDonald (and Richard Morgan and Peter Watts and Walter Jon Williams and William Gibson and, and, and...). It may take Ian McDonald another year to finish The Dervish House - and as a smaller-but-diverse list who only publishes 20 or so novels a year, I really appreciate that you are publishing excellent works in the literate, hard, "Hugo-worthy" science fiction subgenre, because your Iain will keep the reader base engaged and prevent them wandering off into World of Warcraft while my Ian finishes his next masterpiece, and vice-versa. That core SF readership we talk about tend to read 1 - 3 books a month, and Lord Knows I'm not publishing 24 or 36 other books a year in the same subgenre as Brasyl, so I'm glad that others are. Just as people who read David Weber and David Drake are buying our Mike Resnick and people who read our Joe Abercrombie are also buying your Brian Ruckley. I've said this before but I'll say it till I am blue in the face. I am grateful for every quality SF&F work published, no matter who publishes it, and I will always publicly and loudly applaud it when I see it, because every quality work retains and supports the existing readership, while containing within it the potential to grow that readership by attracting new eyeballs.

It's the bad books - those that an uninitiated reader wandering into our section of the bookstore for the first time pick up, dislike, and use to dismiss the output of an entire genre - that doom us all. If I'm in a war with anything, it's a war with bad books, and there ain't nothin' we discussed here today that qualifies as that.

Happy reading!

Picacio in 2007

Over on his blog On the Front, John Picacio posts his published 2007 works. (A lot of John's 2007 was devoted to the forthcoming Elric The Stealer of Souls,but you have to wait another month to see that. The list are just those works which appeared on books published during the 2007 calendar year.) Check out the list - it's quite impressive and quite beautiful.

Oh, and look, the Hugo Ballot is now Online.

Sideways in Crime: Latest Cover

Here's a Christmas present! The good guys at Solaris just sent me a pack of cover flats from my forthcoming anthology, Sideways In Crime.Needless to say, I'm thrilled to death with my first Eggleton, and his work is complimented by a cool retro-design from Darius Hinks too. Nice, yes?

The Big Book Cover Post: Part II

I love talking about book covers, and I particularly like it when the blogosphere takes up the discussion in force, since more discussion of the wonderful art and artists who are such an integral part of our field is always a good thing. Since George Mann kicked it off with Marrying Authors to their Market and my response, The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards & Spaceships, there's been a flurry of book design-related activity online.

First, our mutual author David Louis Edelman displays the matching covers for the forthcoming Solaris Books mass market edition of Infoquake and the forthcoming Pyr trade paperback edition of the 2nd book in the series, MultiReal. (Follow the links to David's blog, both to see larger versions of both covers, and to join in the wealth of comments the covers are engendering.)

Then Torque Control chimed in with Cover Art. The post is mostly a pointer to other discussions, but with some very interesting comments in the thread. Most interesting to me is this comment from Gollancz editor Simon Spanton: "Are our SF covers going more abstract? Quite possibly. Are they doing this in order to reach the ‘wider readership’? Well if they are it isn’t going to work as, 99 times out of 100, the books, whatever their cover, are still going to be stocked in the SF section. Are they, instead, merely reflecting a wider trend away from strictly illustrative covers that the rest of the industry has been following of late? Much more likely. I have no illusions about our ability to transform the way that SF books are seen. What I am hoping is that we can alert one-time readers, and occasional readers and regular readers to the fact that SF is not stuck in some sort of time warp. I’m coming to think that the only jobs a genre cover has to (and can) do are to alert the reader to whether it is SF/fantasy/other (that other still retaining elements of the fantastic because, remember, it’s in a genre section) and try and convey some sense of the books quality by, itself, being a high quality design (not necessarily incorporating a high quality traditional illustration)... I think to assume that the traditional fantasy and SF readership are in some way not being catered for within the current movement towards some covers being more ‘designed’ or more ‘abstract’ is danger of assuming that said readers aren’t aware of and comfortable with how design moves on. SF and fantasy fans don’t dress like they did in 1985, the music they listen to isn’t packaged as it was in 1985, the cars they drive don’t look like they did in 1985 (I could go on), so why should their books? And I’m also suspicious that this move towards design and abstraction is something new, something that is leaving the more traditional fans, floundering in its sleek wake. Take a look at SF and Fantasy covers from the late 60s and early 70s and there is plenty of abstraction, modish design and garish colour. Just like there was in every other area of design of the period."

Meanwhile, author Mark Chadbourn has some very long, very interesting responses to George and my posts. In Selling Fantasy by the Pound he draws comparisons to other industries, cautioning that "In the music industry, where I worked for a while, the marketeers have struggled. By focusing on the tribalist music fan that has emerged over the last twenty years, they have had trouble gaining breakout hits from genres. Attention shifted to marketing bland fare that would appeal to all tastes to gain those mainstream hits, and sales have fallen dramatically (yes, I know there are many other factors, but this is a core concern). The comics industry in particular has faced a great many problems because of the loss of its mainstream audience. That was caused by the collapse of its distribution network in the late seventies and early eighties and the shift to specialist comics shops. But the comics producers then found that to maintain sales in this rarefied atmosphere required stories that excited the jaded palates of the core fan - and were nigh-on incomprehensible to the casual reader. Sales fell further, the core fan market had to be shored up to a greater extent, and a desperate retreat from the centre ground took place, that is still damaging the industry."

I think Mark is confusing my use of the term "core science fiction and fantasy" with the core of the readership when he talks about catering to jaded palates (though, admittedly, he's also drawing from George's essay and George and I, though we share certain views in common, are not saying exactly the same thing.) I would cite something like John Scalzi's trilogy, Old Man's War,The Ghost Brigades,and (my personal favorite) The Last Colony,works which deal brilliantly with all the "core" iconography of science fiction - planetary colonization, galactic federations, cloning, aliens, mind transference, supersoldiers, FTL - and yet are utterly, totally accessible to brand new SF readers. Scalzi's trilogy is absolutely quintessential SF&F, but it by no means is catering to a small, jaded elite. The books are HUGELY successful, with readers young and old (and from what I understand from Adventures in SciFi Publishing, they are even being passed around the Stargate cast and crew.) What's more, their covers, by John Harris, are a perfect example of presenting SF iconography in a mature light. As is, by the way, the cover for Scalzi's novel The Android's Dream,a beautiful cover (and title) which is hardly hiding its genre affiliations.

Mark's post sparked Darren of the Genre Files to return to the topic with with Genre fiction marketing follow-up - Lou Anders and Mark Chadbourn, where he asks, "Can you achieve all those aims at once? Can you write high-quality, literary genre fiction that's successfully marketed to a core audience of fans, yet still has enough break-out potential to escape the genre-ghetto and achieve mass-market sales?" Darren then makes an impassioned plea for "helping the readership to raise its standards; to expect, to want, to demand much more from their genre fiction, and thereby move the mainstream audience closer to the credible, literary end of the spectrum. In other words, expanding the middle ground between 'long tail' and 'short head' (it would help if I had time to draw the graph, I'll try to add one at a later date) and creating greater potential for higher quality fiction to thrive. If the readership demands richer, better quality genre fiction, and the readership then votes with its credit cards and buys more of it, then the publishers of the world will respond by publishing more of it. And I know for a fact that this would make a lot of genre fiction publishers immensely happy. "

In the comments section, the always interesting Andrew Wheeler pops up with this bit of wisdom: "It's a beautiful vision, but...the world of 'literary' fiction is not the mainstream at all. It's a small backwater, which moves fewer units annually in aggregate than the SFF genre (though the big hits are much bigger -- which of course means that the average sales are notably smaller). Trying to 'break out' into literary fiction is an attempt to jump into a smaller pond, merely because they have better press. (Which is reasonable, if what you really want is good press.) The real mainstream in fiction consists of two genres that are so large and important that they're not consistently called genres: romance/women's fiction and the thriller. If writers primarily want to reach very large audiences, they need to find ways to write in those genres. (Which doesn't necessarily mean abandoning SFF: the former has been combined with Fantasy very successfully over the past decade, and technothrillers are the merger of the latter with elements of SF.)"

Blogger S. M. Duke joins in with Cover Designs: Yet Another Take, and this valid reminder: "The sad thing is, I don't generally buy books by the title or the author. In fact, unless a book comes off to me as genre, I probably won't even look at it. That's just the way it is and the way it is for a lot of people. For me, the trend of making books look more mainstream isn't working. I've never read a Neil Gaimen book because of the way they are packaged, and as I'm learning, that is a very horrible thing. I saw the Stardust movie and it was one of the best films of the year--yes, it was that good despite what the stupid box office reported for sales. I should have read the book, and his other novels too, but I never have because the covers never strike me as fantasy. If Ender's Gameby Orson Scott Card had not had this cover, I would have ignored it entirely."

Which is a perfectly accurate representation of a portion of the SF&F readership, as well as being reflective of a lot of comments I frequently hear from fans around these parts.

Elsewhere, Design Unit 38 doesn't like three of our titles' illustrations, (including one that has been a major success with the all important chain buyers) as pointed out in "Cover design and science fiction." At least they offer the concession that "Lou Anders at Pyr has shepherded many good novels onto the racks at Barnes and Noble." I take that and move on.

To where Calico Reaction admits that Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detectiveisn't targeted at her, and adds that "that damn cover kept glaring at me, and I must say, kudos to the artist: he captured Elric (aka Zenith) so perfectly that I could not HELP but visualize that illustration every time I saw the character described in the book."

In the comments thread, Dawtheminstreal adds: "I recently heard TNH and PNH of Tor talking about what leads people to buy books and they both thought the cover art had a big influence. They said the cover sent out mating signals, and the reader responded or not."

Finally, SFFWorld has a very interesting discussion thread going titled "Embarrasssing/Awful cover art." Well worth reading, if for nothing else, the range of opinions expressed. You see some readers coming down in favor of the purely designed covers as typified by something like George R R Martin's fantasies and you see other readers proudly embracing the covers on R A Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels - which always catch my eye, personally - but which must represent the other end of the spectrum from GRRM.

Which has to be the final word - that, as illustrator John Picacio recently reminded me, no book can be all things to all people. Responding to the "mating signals" comment, John says, "I see that analogy, but that metaphor triggers a deeper thought to me. I see this tendency from book publishers to more and more want covers that send disingenuous mating signals, or more specifically, mating signals that say 'hey, I want everyone to like me' and so you fall in love with the cover, but then you buy the book and read it, and you hate it and you tell your friends because you feel deceived. Haven’t we both bought CDs (pre-Itunes) because we heard a single that was kick-ass and then the rest of the album wasn’t anything like it and sucked? ...Point being, I tend to think that it’s the same with books, and I wonder if the notion that 'as long as the cover sells the book, it’s done it’s job' isn’t a flawed statement. Seems like a very short-view approach, if the mating signal of a cover is viewed as being JUST about selling the book, as opposed to connecting it with its rightful readership. Bottom line: I think the 'mating signal' thing doesn’t replace selling with integrity, and in the end, if you can create a cover with integrity (true to the spirit of the book, etc.) and that can connect it with its rightful audience, then that two-pronged goal is the one to shoot for, in equal harmony, rather than one without the other. Seems to me the publisher builds a better relationship with their audience over the long haul that way. ...Sometimes the real truth is that a book is only going to sell to 'x' number of people, and I think the troubles arise when the sales department says, ‘yeah, but if we put a non-illustrative/more generic cover on this, maybe we can FOOL other readers into buying it.’ I think the audience remembers when it’s deceived and I think the industry serves itself poorly when we do that."

The Big Book Cover Post: Wizards & Spaceships

My good buddy George Mann, consultant editor of newish imprint Solaris Books, recently wrote an article for UK book trade magazine Publishing News on the packaging and branding of SF&F novels. Now, George has put the entire article, "Marrying Authors to their Market: A Genre Perspective," up on the Solaris website. The article is well-worth reading.

Therein, George makes the distinction between two schools of thought in cover design, namely "to package your SF/F novel to appeal to as wide a readership as possible, in the hope of enticing readers from other areas of the bookstore to pick it up on a whim; or to package your SF/F novel to appeal to the perceived core readership of the genre, or indeed, fans of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, people who want a book with a spaceship or a wizard on the front of it."

George goes on to discuss the risks associated with both camps. In trying for the broader market, one risks missing the mark, ending up with a book still shelved in the SF&F section, failing to hit the elusive "mainstream" reader AND failing to appeal to the core as well. In marketing for the core, the novel "is appealing to a much more limited readership and has little or no chance of transcending the genre and breaking out into the bestseller lists."

He states that from its inception Solaris decided "for better or for worse – to place ourselves directly in that second camp." This was done both because their parent company - Games Workshop - had eight years experience marketing directly to a niche audience with their Black Library imprint of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 titles. But also because of a perceived market niche not being serviced: "Essentially, at the heart of the genre, the midlist was disappearing. The result of this was that the core SF/F readership was not being as well served as it had been in the past; people who went into a high street bookshop to browse the SF/F section were not necessarily seeing those aforementioned books with wizards and spaceships on the front."

George's sentiments are very close to my own thoughts and ongoing decisions for the Pyr imprint. In setting up the imprint to begin with, we made the decision to go for books which Norman Spinrad, writing in the pages of Asimov's, once described as "science fiction written specifically for experienced and intelligent readers of science fiction, with a bit of fantasy more or less in the same mode thrown in." Although there are exceptions to the rule, we have largely forgone literary experimentation or watered-down "mainstreamed" SF&F for (to quote Norman again) "actual science fiction...and fantasy...of an overall higher literary quality."

And this is reflected in how we've chosen to package it.

Personally, I do not not not like the move away from illustration to design that I see coming out from a lot of houses (though it has its place for individual books - I'm talking about a general trend). I think to forgo illustration is to sacrifice one of the core strengths of SF&F and one of its unique selling points. I do, however, think you can have cake and eat too. There is a world of difference between what Tor art director Irene Gallo has done with John Scalzi's Old Man's Warcovers - which do indeed feature spaceships and planets, albeit beautifully rendered in John Harris' very "painterly" style - and the sort of archetypal cheesy metal bikini and Bug Eyed Monster cover that is sometimes associated with the worst of genre illustration. Both styles of cover prominently feature the central SF&F imagery, but one does so with taste and the other, not so much. What's more - I'm not married to the core imagery so much as I am to the idea of provocative illustration. I also really like the way Bantam here has packaged Lightand Nova Swing- cats and dice, cats and cards - doesn't necessarily say SF to me at, but they do say cool. I'm intrigued by the image. Those are nice looking books and I enjoy looking at them. And, hey, if I'm going to shell out $25 for a hardcover, I want more than the author's name in enormous type with a stylized sword or an embossed fleur-de-lis or some other squiggle of design.

I am not talking about creating a book that appeals to both genre and mainstream people in the crossover way George suggest. I am talking about creating a book cover that appeals to genre fans, fully celebrates genre elements, but does so with some artistic merit to it. I think both John Picacio and Stephan Martiniere (to name two of my favorite artists) fully embrace those aspects of genre fiction that embody sense of wonder, yet present them in a way that also qualified as art. (As does the latest illustrator to work with Pyr, Sparth, pictured right.) Which is how I think you reach, not the never-read it, never-will uninitiated, but what Gollancz editor Simon Spanton once defined as the "lapsed catholics" of science fiction - those who read more as children and now read maybe one book a year, generally by an author they know. These readers have grown up - show them their fiction has grown up with them. I think what makes a success like John Scalzi or Richard Morgan is not going after mainstream readers, but going after the whole field, from the core to the fringes, and that you do so, neither by hiding/omitting your genre elements nor presenting them in an off-putting, garish manor, but by presenting them in a mature, intriguing, attractive, inclusive, compelling 21st century light.

George and I were talking all this over with the aforementioned John Picacio, and this is what he had to say (and kindly consented to allow me to republish here): "The field must visually celebrate itself, rather than run away from itself. Couldn’t agree with you [George] more. And I realize the context in which you’re saying this, regarding the midlist specifically. When sf/fantasy publishing shows an insecurity about its visual strengths, that insecurity rubs off negatively not only on our audiences, but in the broader media, and we push ourselves backwards every time we do that. How often do we hear sf/fantasy film actors make apologies for the 'sf-ness' of a film or TV show, or say that 'if it didn’t label itself as sf, more people would check it out'? Complete bullshit. But when I hear comments like that, I think that attitude reflects two important things. It’s bad because those comments get doled out via the larger media and that attitude gets disseminated to the larger populace as a popular opinion, which is damaging, but more importantly I think it reflects how poorly the field sees itself at times, and by 'the field' I mean us over here in publishing as the root of that problem. My point is, the field can’t expect larger audiences and bigger sales numbers, unless it stops being insecure about itself and stops projecting visual insecurity via cliched design decisions that hide the gusto, spirit, invention and provocativeness of a book. I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s real simple — the book is God. It’ll tell you what it wants to be every single time."

Well said. Meanwhile, I'm delighted to see that over at The Genre Files, "Ariel" has managed to tie George's philosophy in with Wired-magazine main man Chris Anderson's brilliant The Long Tail, when he writes (emphasis mine): "In this Internet-enabled information age, data on the variety and wide availability of a range of products in a given product area is - for practical purposes - both limitless and free. From the point of view of the Long Tail audience for a particular product, the most pressing task is therefore to filter that vast flood of data in order to select the products that offer the best fit for the customer's needs. In short: they need to boost the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where they can reach an informed purchasing decision. Similarly, from the point of view of the producer, the trick is to somehow rise above the vast sea of info-noise; to make their product stand out and be noticed, yet to do so in a manner that emphasises its authentic appeal to the potential customer."

To make your product stand out and be noticed. Get above the signal-to-noise ration. That means let your SF&F light shine - not hide it under a bushel! Hey, what's a bushel anyway?