This is true. One could equate this to how we interact with people. Attractive people are... attractive. The word means draws you to it. And I think we've all experienced the phenomenon of lack of correlation between initial attractiveness and subsequent getting-to-know. We've all met pretty people who weren't worth were a minute of our time, come to find out, and widdershins likewise. But though there be no correlation between pretty/plain and interesting/dull, we cannot walk away from 2 million years of evolution drawing us to pretty so quickly. We have to learn that the attraction is often a red herring.
If I am at a bookstore and go into the fantasy section, there is a thousand books literally lined up in front of me. The first thing I'll think is what kind of book I want. Epic fantasy? Political intrigue? Rogue type? Then I'll look at the covers, I don't have time to read 1000 book flaps. If on the cover something conveys mystery, thieves, or murder then I will look at the back to see what it's about. If I see a pretty damsel on a horse I will skip it (unless it strikes my fancy despite my original disposition) and move to the next book. The only time this matters less is when I go to the philosophy section where the title attracts me more than the cover. Philosophy books tend to be more plain and simple in design, with the title, praise, and... synopsis? being a deciding factor.
The price and condition of the book. I don't like spending too much on books because I'm a student at the moment, and having a book that isn't going to fall apart on me is also important. The latter has more to do with practicality than appearance. Actually, the chances of me picking up a random book are pretty much nonexistent. I usually have an idea of which writers/books I'm on the lookout for when I go into the store. If I can't find anything, I'm more likely to go for an anthology than some random book/writer I've never heard of.
Oh, that's fair enough. I suppose if you're not really a book browser, then book covers don't really matter. You know what you want, and it doesn't matter what the wrapper looks like. I do look at covers when I'm in a bookshop, but when I go on Amazon, I'm usually looking for a particular book, or am researching a particular topic. In those cases, a cover doesn't really matter to me, either. But when I'm just slumming through a bookstore, they definitely do.
I'm not necessarily attracted to pretty covers. I'm more attracted to covers that seem to promise the kind of reading experience I enjoy. For example, anything historical that doesn't have a war history or a bodice-ripper aura to it will usually grab my attention. The more specific, the better. I love fiction that makes use of social history, and anything that promises that will pique my interest. A picture of a generic sunset over water—however pretty—doesn't capture my attention ...too many of them on book covers these days. A collection of objects usually doesn't either, although it MIGHT, if the objects are well-chosen and promise a good story. I guess what I'm saying here is I like the cover to reflect the content in some way, and in a way that makes me want to find out what the story is all about. Too many modern book covers really don't—such as your sci-fi examples. As @minstrel pointed out, those Sandra Zahirovic Delaney covers could just as easily be boring accounting reports. Nothing there to entice a reader. Why settle for generic and uninformative when choosing a book cover? Comparing these to the 'dated' ones you gave us later on, I have no doubt which would make me curious about the story itself.
I wasn't meaning specifically pretty as an absolute. I was just pointing out the disconnect in correlation. The sterile cover of Nova is arguably prettier than the one I prefer from the 1970's, but what I like about the cover from the 70's is that it entices with surrealism and has a tortured, haunted quality to it. The ship cruises an ugly landscape of destroyed ships. The Dhalgren cover from the 1970's is also not pretty, but it speaks. It has a dream quality to it, and not a comfortable dream, but a strange and disjointed sweat-the-sheets kind of dream.
The Nova cover from the 70s says one essential thing: it's SCIENCE FICTION. The modern cover doesn't even say that. The modern cover looks, as I said, like a government report on something boring. It seems to me that the first thing a cover should convey is the genre of the work. A bookstore browser wants to know, based on the cover art, what the heck he's looking at. That doesn't put a lot of restrictions on the cover artist. If the book is about spacefaring people faring about space, is it too much to ask that the cover depict some degree of that? I'm a science fiction fan from childhood, and I wanna see a goddam spaceship on the cover! If I don't see that, I ain't buyin'!
Interesting topic, however having read the entire thread it strikes me that there's a huge problem in cover design that nobody actually seems to mention these days. 'Book Cover Designers' are usually exactly that, 'Designers' first and foremost. They will generally have gone through the University route and qualified in some sort of sterile packaged graphic design course before being taken on by a publishing house. The people doing the 1970s Nova style of covers are actually fine artists first and foremost, many of whom hand-painted the cover art. It was a laborious and often expensive procedure. These days with stock photos or free downloads of GIMP or similar software pretty much anyone can knock together a cover in half an hour, and so many do. It's a shame because the amateur ones often look so bad that nobody will buy the book, and the clinically rendered graphic designer covers are really lacking soul. A properly painted cover gets my vote every time.
Only one of those is abstract. These are by Sandra Zahirovic: This is postmodernist avant-gaurde View attachment 5679 View attachment 5680 These are by Karen Horten: and are actually abstract View attachment 5681 And these are by Evan Gaffney: Postmodern impressionism There's something very "drop menu"-ie about the text. View attachment 5682
As a commercial artist myself it's clear that you 1.) don't know what you're talking about 2.) are very offensive about it. Anyone working on those covers is a post modern artist who has told the "fine" art world of post modernism to got fuck itself. Frank Frazzeta and others like him were not "fine" artists, they were 100% commercial, working for a paycheck. The implication that "designers" are somehow less artistic denigrates a huge population of talented artists.
I agree. This is where, as a writer, you have to have the balls to say "no, something is niggling, this is not what I want, can we try it this way?" and the designer has the respect to say "yes". and do it BUT ... The writer also has to accept that there's a possibility that what he says yes to, the designer will say "Sorry, not putting my name to that." It's a fine balance. The author knows the story and more often than not, the designer does not so you have to do a lot of backing and forthing until you meet in the middle with a cover that works. I'm not keen on any of the covers you listed above, Sandra's look boring (to me, I wouldn't pick them up), Karen's look like school text books on maths and science and Evan's look like public enquiry reports. Apart from the one with the eye, that one just makes me want to poke the eye with a pencil! But then, I'm not a graphic designer by any means. Yes, I have an artistic eye but for photography, not design.
There's nothing wrong with Sandra's from a design perspective, she's actually doing some interesting stuff. But there's no connection between her covers and the subject matter. What does a rolled up tube of paper have to do with the spaceship Rama? They're both cylindrical...I guess.
That's what I mean when I say boring. They don't convey anything to me, they don't make me stop and look. As I mentioned in another thread somewhere, the cover of a book is the bait. The blurb is the hook. The story is how the author reels in the reader and a good story will have that reader searching your name to see if you've written anything else. Without good bait, you may as well go home. @minstrel I hear what you're saying about "if it 'aint got a spaceship on it I 'aint buying!", but I'm not sure that quite works for all genres. I can see it working fab for scifi and fantasy genres but no so much some others. There's no way I would have bought a paperback copy of Fifty Shades had it had a cover showing a whip and a vibrating butt plug! Saying that, I have no idea what sort of story my cover conveys to people. Hmmmm. I must start asking!
I think cutecat said it best. The cover is the bait and the blurb is the hook. I think with ebooks this is especially true. I often don't even notice the cover as I'll go right to reading the "blurb" when purchasing an ebook. In a bookstore, the cover seems to matter more to me when I think about how I browse the aisles since the "blurb" is not readily displayed as with an ebook.
I also think that some authors don't pay enough attention to blurbs. Not that I know everything! but as an example, I was browsing the kindle books the other week and I came across a series of about 7/8 books that followed on and told the story of two characters. They looked quite interesting so I read the blurb of the first one. Then I read the blurb of the second one. After reading all the blurbs, I didn't need to read the books. The blurbs had given me the complete storyline.
I realize that I'm not part of this debate, but you seem awfully offended by the idea that someone would defend a profession that you chose to criticize, in fact chose to pretty thoroughly condemn.
That's a great way to summarize it. I usually dismiss any books that don't have a professional cover. If they can't even get that right, how shit is the book going to be? My own personal saying is: You can't judge a book by it's cover, but that is how you choose them. And here's another one of my wise old sayings: Writers that don't have another artistic background yet make their own covers are idiots. I'm an award winning photographer (it's one of my hobbies) and even I wouldn't be arrogant stupid enough to make my own cover without some professional artistic help.
I'm not so sure. It depends what you want your cover to look like. I'm not an artists, I can't draw/paint so if I was writing fantasy fiction, I would have not idea how to put a cover together. I made my own covers for both the true life and the erotic/romance. I wouldn't say they are the best thing since sliced bread but compared to some out there, well ... The only reason I now need to find help for the next book, is because of the IT side, the program has changed and I have no idea (and no inclination to learn) how the new one works. So I think it all depends on what you actually want your cover to look like.
It's also worth pointing out that those painting covers your so fond of cost the publisher tens of thousands of dollars. I've sold a couple of paintings, but if you wanted something for a book cover I wouldn't even think of it for less then a grand. Before expenses.
Which is why it's extremely important (if a painted cover is the way you want to go) for the author and the artist to get on the same page. It's a lot easier for a graphic designer to make a few little changes than it is for an artist to totally change his painting.
http://www.casualoptimist.com/blog/2013/12/10/50-covers-for-2013/ Here's some. Doesn't really include genre though. I should look to see if someone has done a best genre covers list
Ugh.. that book cover for Edward Carson. MYEYES!!! They're all so.. terrible >.> Maybe they're just not what I'm used to seeing. Though, I did like the one for The Son of a Certain Woman and The Night Guest
good sci fi covers ... (according to them) http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/favorite-science-fiction-and-fantasy-book-covers-of-2013 top 25 ridiculous (according to them) romance covers http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/12/25-most-ridiculous-romance-novel-covers/
