Notice a tendancy for characters on the cover not to resemble the description in the book?

Uh huh! And...tell me, everyone. Does a dragon on the front cover immediately make you think "Oooh, I've got to buy me that book there right now!"? Me, it makes run screaming to the Sci-Fi section. Also unicorns. Can we say cliche?

How about women in chain mail bikinis, cup size ZZZ? That's totally cliche, and doesn't work.

I don't know...
there's this book called ' Into the Darkness or
something' , which has this beautiful picture pof
a Dragon on the cover, that I really want to read.
I don't know why I do, but I don't, and I don't
know why I don't, so I don't know why I do or why
I do

The reason for characters not to resemble the descriptions is easy. There's no time for the artist to read the manuscript. In some cases the book is being written as the cover is being painted. Sometimes the publisher buys artwork that looks like it could go on 'that type of book'. In other cases the artist uses models and he, or she, doesn't necesarily choose models who look like the writer's description.

rachgd: What kind of enlightened bookstores do you have in Australia? Here in the US, the bookstores lump Fantasy, SF and Sword & Sorcery all together.
As for the dragon theory, probably. Book publishing is a business and they check all sorts of weird things. Green covers sell the worst. Don't know why, but Artist David Cherry was told that when he did a cover painting for one of his sister's books. (C.J. Cheryh is his sister.) Even though the description in the book described the scene as a green light, for the cover he had to paint it blue. Comic books with skeletons on the cover don't sell, unless they're Conan comic books. (If you dig around you'll find all sorts of odd and weird info.) So it wouldn't surprise me if somebody did a study that said, "Yes. Dragons on covers sell books!"

ScottN: The worst part about chain mail bikinis is when the model sweats too much and gets rusted in to the suit. Then you gotta use a blowtorch to get her free... It's a terrible hassle. ;-)

What bugs me about some covers is when they give a false impression of what the book is about, or they give away some plot twist. Patricia's McKillip's Heir Of Sea And Fire had a good looking Darrel Sweet painting, but it was of a scene that didn't happen until near the end of the book.

While I accept Keith's comment that the artist often doesn't (have time to) read the book, it is really annoying when the picture is so totally wrong. One of the Belgariad sequence - can't remember which one - has a picture of Ce'Nedra on it where she's as tall as Garion, yet she's always described as being tiny. And some of the other front covers in the sequence don't seem to have any connection with the contents at all!

I don't know anyone who buys books on the basis of the cover art. Personally I prefer more abstract kinds of concepts (e.g. Tolkien's designs for the LotR covers), but that's pretty uncommon anymore.

This syndrome, incidentally, is also rampant in scifi. Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" comes to mind--the cover of the paperback depicts a towering spaceport, when there are no spaceports described anywhere in the book and the planet where the action takes place has no spaceport anyway.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

You can't even judge it by it's back cover blurb, but that sounds like another topic.

I've heard of people who buy books for the cover art. Usually collectors though.

Omer, I believe that would that would be Into the Darkness by Harry Turtledove. Is it already available in Israel? It's not too bad, but I think Turtledove does better when he tells a story from the viewpoint of one or two characters (as he does with Guns of the South and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump), rather than several. BTW, if you get The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, get it in English. It's so filled with word play that a translation would be incapable of doing it justice.

mmm...
I don't know if it's available in Israel yet, cause I live in Brussels right now and saw it here.

çool that you remembered, though:-)

It probably did arrive to Israel, but it wasn't translated to hebrew as far as I know.

Is turtledove (some name that is) a good writer?

I'm kinde' hesitating to read more Fantrasy right now, as I'm waiting impatiantly to the next Song of Ice and Fire book. I bought a Guy Gabrial Kay book, though, cause I heard lots of good things about him.

I wanna try Tad Williams, too

Omer, Turtledove specializes in alternate history.

For example: The U.S. Civil war ended with the South seceding from the US.

or: It's 1942, WWII is in full swing, and the aliens land, causing all humans to suspend their hostilies to find common cause against them...

Or... Byzantium never fell...

I like his stuff.

sounds intresting... what's his best book?

I'm not a Turtledove fan myself, but I have a
friend who claims that Guns of the South is the
best book ever.

I've noticed that translated books particularly
seem to have bad, irrelevent, cover art. To
improve my French I used to buy Anne McCaffrey
novels in Montreal. The English editions all had
pictures that fit the book's description of the
characters but the French versions all had various
fur clad barbarians holding spears on them.

KAM: Regarding enlightened bookstores - a genre store I frequent separates Sci Fi and Fantasy. It's quite funny to see how they handle the works of authors like Piers Anthony and Christopher Stasheff!

Worst Cover Art Ever Award: Any "Gor" novel by John Norman. Of course, in the case of the "Gor" novels, you can judge a book by its cover...

No, because the Gor cover art is, at least, ten times better than anything you would find inside.

(A voracious reader I know, who usually reads every book in a series, gave up on this series after book 12 or 13, because he kept yelling at the book, "I get the point already! Female slavery! Now get on with the story!")

Multi-genre authors are always a problem for bookstores. Isaac Asimov's Mystery stories and True Science sitting next to his other books in the Science Fiction section. Agatha Christie wrote 6 romantic books as Mary Westmacott, but these are now stuck in the Mystery section. The most troubling one I saw was Judy Blume. For years she wrote Children's Books, then she wrote an Adult novel called Wifey. Guess what sometimes shows up in the Children's section?

What I hate about cover blurbs is when they reveal something about the plot that's supposed to be kept secret from the reader until an important part of the story. One good example I can think of offhand is Ballantine's paperback reprint of Tarzan the Terrible (Tarzan series #8), in which the identity of a character which is supposed to be a surprise at the end of the novel is brazenly revealed.

While we are on the subject of Tarzan, the Ballantine cover art by Neal Adams and Boris Vallejo for the Ballantine reprints is excellent. However, there are a couple of errors on these covers. Book #14, Tarzan the Invincible, done by Adams, depicts Tarzan battling a horde of Arab soldiers while riding a black horse. This scene actually occurs late in book #11, Tarzan Lord of the Jungle (whose Vallejo cover depicts a scene from earlier in the novel when Tarzan rescues Bolgani the gorilla from the python). Book #15, Tarzan Triumphant (Adams), has Tarzan strangling Dango the Hyena to death with his bare hands. This actually takes place in the aforementioned Tarzan the Invincible. What this means is that two scenes from Lord of the Jungle are represented, and none from Triumphant.
Also, in Vallejo's cover for book #20, Tarzan and the Forbidden City, depicts an underwater scene in the book where Tarzan rescues Helen from the sea serpent. However, neither Tarzan nor Helen is wearing the underwater suits they are supposed to have on in this scene (whoops)!

It's possible that both artists did artwork for Lord Of The Jungle and that the art director decided to use one of them on Invincible.
The mistake with Forbidden City however, is the artist's fault since it was a reprint of an old novel, he should have been able to read an older copy.

There was a cartoon in Writer's Digest in the early 80's which featured an Author & an Editor and the Editor says, "You're too talented to write books. How would you like to write back-cover blurbs instead?"
I've often suspected that whoever writes back-cover blurbs has little or no idea what the book is about.

sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. There's a cool back to Stephen King's The Running Man, which goes: 'Welcome to America in 2025, when the best men don't run for President - they run for their lives'
I loved that, and it really made me read the book
*which was the first book I've ever read in english, and still has a dear place in my heart for that)

Wouldn't it be a great job, though?
Read books, and write a couple of (hopefully, positive) paragraphs about 'em.
I could do that.

You know I would like to rephrase my comment about the Forbidden City cover being the artist's fault. It may have been his fault or the publishers might have insisted that Tarzan and the woman be pictured a certain way so the readers could 'tell at a glance' that it was a Tarzan book. (As if the readers couldn't see the name Tarzan printed there.)
Artist Steve Hickman wrote that he painted a Conan cover once and the publishers had him repaint parts of it because Conan didn't look exactly like their image of Conan. Apparently the hair has to be a certain length and other bits of nonsense have to be adhered to.
Doc Savage has had the same stup¡d haircut since the 60's, even though the early pulp covers had a much better looking hairstyle. (And the artists have only used 2 different ripped shirts.)
So it's possible that series characters have to look a certain way on the covers, because the publishers see that look as the character's 'trademark'.

rachgd: I would love to write back cover blurbs for a living.

Omer: Sometimes the blurb writer is very familiar with the story, but it doesn't help. Lawrence Block wrote a mystery novel and a reviewer said that he wished the blurb writer had written the book instead. The funny thing is, Block also wrote the blurb.

I think Doc Savage was pictured with that hairstyle on the Bantam covers because it better fitted the description of his hair as a "bronze skullcap" so often described in the series.
Gotta love those James Bama covers, though. I have a complete collection of all 96 Bantam singles (omnibuses too, though I'm still looking for a few doubles). I think my favorite Bama cover is the one for "Hex".

Want to talk about bad cover art? I've got three letters for you.

D K S

Fans of the Wheel of time will understand.

ScottN and the company - you've made me try Turtledove. I bought 'WORLD WAR' and so far it's really nice.

Bitmap - well, yeah, but the books aren't all that great either.

My vote for the worst cover art ever seen: Those...doodles (I can't even bring myself to call them drawings, much less art) on one of the hardcover editions of the Serpentwar saga. I think the paperbacks have the lousy cover too, though that seems to be a trend with many paperback editions.

For those of you who haven't seen them, the covers have a solid-primary-color background, with a small doodle of something on the front cover. I can't decide which is worse - the drawing of a man(?) in an yellowish cloak facing away from the viewer, holding up a stick that I think is supposed to be a sword, on Rage of a Demon King (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559352450.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif), or two chrome-colored(!) hands holding a crown that looks like one of those Burger King paper hats, on Shards of a Broken Crown (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0380789833.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif). Bleeeeech!

Why the differences in cover art between the US and Canada? I'm the last person to say we're one homogenous culture, but you'd think that book art would be pretty consistent.

When I moved to the States last year I noticed that one of my favourite books (Guy Gavriel Kay's "Sailing to Sarantium") had a really ugly cover here. In Canada it's a midnight blue cover with a Middle Eastern-type cityscape at dusk. It's lovely. Here the cover is a day scene of a city with a fairly ugly man in front. The man is definitely the focus.

I can't bring myself to buy the sequel here; I'll have to wait until I go home again.

Denny those Feist covers are terrible. I'm a fan of Feists and you should see the covers we have for the Serpentwar saga in the UK. It's a lot better, proper art!!
I always thought that the US had the better art in covers, now I'm not so sure.

I'm also given to understand that the covers for A Crown of Swords in Sweden (over there they divide each Wheel of Time book into two volumes) are even worse than the ones done by Sweet here in the U.S. of A. (neat trick).

An example of good covers are the Xanth series by Piers Anthony (although I'm not certain about the re-release covers, as I haven't seen any yet). They are pretty relevant to the story and usually get the characters right.

The cover artwork for some of the US Pratchetts seems quite sparse from what I've seen, it's one of the things that makes a Pratchett book stand out is the Josh Kirby artwork. Though that might partially be because books like Craig Shaw Gardners have a similiar style of artwork and they want them to be different enough in looks.

Sadly, Josh Kirby passed away a few months ago.

Terry Pratchett has said that he likes the U.S. covers (at least "Small Gods"). I like the simplicity of the U.S. Discworld covers, though I do wish I could also buy the U.K. covers without having to pay such high prices ($18 for "Moving Pictures")!

Funnily enough, the single US print I have of Pratchett's is Small Gods, and the design is quite distinctive.

Regarding those Feist serpentwar covers, these are the UK ones, a lot nicer in my opinion.

http://home.c2i.net/milarsen/images/covers/feist/soadq.jpg

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/xbo61/ref/ref-b7.jpg

http://www.crydee.com/feist/cover_l/ukbc_roadk_l.jpg

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/xbo61/ref/ref-b13.jpg

Speaking of bad cover art, and Harry Turtledove, how about the Great War and Worldwar series? The American editions all have great cover art (Confederate WWI troops attacking the Capitol, Hitler, Stalin and Mao conferring as a nuclear bomb goes off in the background, etc.) while the British editions have hopeless rubbish (pointless pictures of rifles, inaccurate-era tanks, and cartoony inaccurate pictures of the 'Race' from Worldwar.

Please note: I AM British. That's why I'm so ticked off! And I also can't seem to get The Two Georges, which seems unfair as it's the one where Britain wins the American War of Independence and still rules the world in 1996!

Good cover art there, too... It's a representation of the painting.

What's everyone's opinion on the Josh Kirby cover art for the Discworld books? I'm not saying it was bad - and even if I thought that I wouldn't say it, it would dishonour his memory...but it was certainly very surreal and idiosyncratic. On the other hand, it marked Discworld books in an immediately recognisable way (I once nearly bought a fantasy book by another author by accident, as it had a Kirby cover). Now that he's gone, of course, the new Discworld books have Paul Kidby covers, which are more accurate to the descriptions in the book, but not as immediately recognisable and idiosyncratic. What do you think, Kirby vs. Kidby?

And on a completely unrelated note, for those people who've read Harry Turtledove's Darkness series (the 'Fantastical WW2' ones), I've discovered something interesting. Most people know that the countries in the book represent real-world countries, but with the cultures mixed up (sometimes so people don't get offended and can judge things obliquely, sometimes just for a laugh, as with the Zulu/Arab 'Finland').

Example: Algarve, 'Germany' has more like Italian culture.

What I didn't realise was that nearly all the names in the book are NOT MADE UP! I know several people commented about 'Algarve' (it's a resort in Portugal - some thought Turtledove had called his 'Nazi Germany' after that because he'd had a bad holiday there!). But there are others. Nearly all the names, except 'Unkerlant', appear to be real - but often from really obscure countries (apologies to Lithuanians [Valmiera], Romanians [Sibiu] and Anglo-Saxons [Forthweg]). And note that these countries are different from both the cultures shown by the countries in the book AND the real-world countries they represent!

Sorry for rambling on...