Cover cliches

by Annalee Newitz on Nov.11, 2009, under David Anthony Durham, Jeff VanderMeer, Paul G. Tremblay

Ideally, a cover tells readers what’s inside the book, but also turns the book into a unique and precious object. It makes you want to touch the cover, feel the pages turning under your fingers.

When I wrote about Jeff’s new novel on my blog, io9.com, one of the first comments about it from readers was that the cover was incredible. In essence, something about the cover was actually helping to sell potential readers on the content of the book itself. Not only is Jonathan Coulthart’s art simply breathtaking (I’ve been a fan of his for a while now), but it stands out among fantasy/SF bookcovers because it doesn’t depict a cliched image.

By contrast, when I wrote about Greg van Eekhout’s Viking apocalypse romp Norse Code, complaints rolled in about how lame the cover was. It showed a woman, thrusting out her breasts, holding a sword. Behind her is some kind of glowy magical city thing.

tats Cover cliches

A great post on the Orbit blog summed up the fantasy cover cliche: Out of a survey of fantasy novels published in 2008, they discovered that the vast majority usually contained a sword, a “glowy magic thing” and some kind of steed. It’s always stunning to me that publishers think that what makes readers pick up a book is a cover that looks like every other one in the genre. Despite the fact that Norse Code is a pretty great book, io9 readers said they’d be embarrassed to be seen reading it. The cover for Finch, however, intrigued them. It didn’t insult their intelligence; it promised them something rich and strange.

Book covers send a message to readers - in fact, they are often the first message that readers receive about the book if they are browsing. For people who read science fiction and fantasy, two genres that are often disparaged by literary and non-literary types alike, a good cover sends the message that they should not be ashamed of what they are reading. They are not reading trash so undervalued by its publisher that it simply contains warmed-over elements of other covers. Instead, they are reading something whose worth is reflected in the beautiful, thoughtful, or clever book design.

This is only going to become more important as readers have the chance to choose between ebooks and paper. Why buy an object you’re ashamed to carry when you can just download the text to your mobile?

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13 Comments for this entry

jeffvandermeer
November 11th, 2009 on 4:04 pm
Awesome chart Annalee!! (Great to see you at WFC.)
Paul G. Tremblay
November 11th, 2009 on 4:38 pm
Great chart, and I agree with your blog readers on their response to the two covers.
Adam
November 11th, 2009 on 4:56 pm
This speaks poorly of my work-in-progress novel “Knight Riding Towards A Glowy Magical City, Sword Aloft”

Might have to put a lewd lady on the cover to compensate.
Annalee Newitz
November 11th, 2009 on 5:16 pm
I was just disappointed that so few covers contained unicorns.
davidadurham
November 11th, 2009 on 6:29 pm
I bet twenty years ago more of them would’ve had unicorns.
Annalee Newitz
November 11th, 2009 on 6:36 pm
I think what this means is that Jeff needs to include some kind of genetically-engineered unicorn in his next novel so we can see what Coulthart does with it.
Hillsy
November 12th, 2009 on 5:12 am
Guns? On more Fantasy covers than staffs?

While I’m not disposed to the idea of having guns in fantasy, surely the trope leans more towards a society predating firearms?

Or while they were surveying did they accidentally take a detour through ‘war’ and ‘gangsta rapper biography’?
Scott Jensen
November 12th, 2009 on 2:27 pm
Where’s the stat on scantily clad women with big tits?
David Ellis
November 12th, 2009 on 3:10 pm
Personally I’m more interested in cover art that’s good than cover art that tries to avoid elements that are popular.

God help us if fantasy illustrators start avoiding dragons because its a “cliche”.

If Donato had though that way we wouldn’t have this magnificent cover painting:

http://www.donatoart.com/ftsy/drshadow.html
Anthony
November 12th, 2009 on 6:19 pm
I think people could still use those things on their covers, but they need to think of more original ways to use them. Obviously, something like another book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini will have to use the same type of dragon image though. In that case, I say stick with consistency. Overall, just make sure your book actually includes what you picture on the cover. Don’t have a photo of a sword of unicorn if the book doesn’t have either. lol.
Rachel
November 14th, 2009 on 1:35 am
LOL @ Scott. I was thinking the same thing, from the covers I’ve seen over many years. It seems like it’s only been recently that some covers actually move away from that and try to reflect more acurrately the tone or story of the book. When I first saw a much smaller pic of this graph on another page and couldn’t read the words, I just assumed that the tallest bar would be the stat representing T&A.

Actually, though the information is not given, I wonder of all the categories listed, how many of them are actually of provocative or scantily clad women, combined with those things. Stilettos and Damsel are a given, but how many are ‘woman and sword’, ‘woman and glowy magic’, ”woman and horse, etc…

And in response to Hillsy’s comment. A lot of subgenre’s fall under “Fantasy”, like ‘Urban’ or Modern Fantasy, and seeing as how it’s often action and or mystery related, many protagonists and other characters are armed against one another with modern things. Like firearms.
Mickey Factz
January 30th, 2010 on 12:54 am
I apprecite your thoughts!
Gewinne
May 16th, 2010 on 9:07 am
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