Weekend Update: Judge a Book
I like spreadsheets. I use them all sorts of ways when it comes to keeping track of books, and one of those is a release dates list. Rather than following an Amazon Wishlist, I put in the author name, title, format, and release date of any book I'm definitely going to get into a spreadsheet. When I know of an author and a title but no date, it goes towards the bottom of the sheet, so I know to keep searching for a release date. At any rate, periodically, I'll browse through Amazon looking for said dates as well as released cover art, which is always fun, but last night, what I discovered ruffled a pet peeve of mine.
Some of you may remember my rant about the cover art change for The Dead-Tossed Waves. In Carrie Ryan's case, it's not like the new, updated covers are ugly. It's just that the original covers were, to me, so much more evocative. The original covers were the kind that made me want to buy based on cover art alone (trust me, the original cover for The Forest of Hands and Teeth went a LONG way to convince me to purchase), whereas the updated covers -- again, not ugly -- really don't speak to me on that kind of level. Especially the one for The Forest of Hands and Teeth: trust me, these people DO NOT have eyeliner.
Now, I can't complain about the cover for the third book, The Dark and Hollow Places. It's quite pretty and moody, but I can't help but wonder what it would've looked like if the design team had followed the original concept.
Many of you probably ALSO remember my rant for Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth cover change. Man, if I don't find the new cover scheme butt-ugly. One of you commented that it reminded you of the album art for an eighties metal band, and that's a right-on description.
So can you IMAGINE my consternation when I -- looking for the cover art for the third book, Goliath, on Westerfeld's website, found the original cover art for Behemoth? Just take a look in all of its glory: here.
Does anyone else feel the need to weep? I mean, this is GORGEOUS! Great coloring, and I bet it would've been quite shiny in person too. Seeing this just breaks my heart, and makes me wonder what these art departments are thinking when they make such radical changes. Just look at what happened to Ann Aguirre's YA debut: we went from this to this.
Now, in the case of Aguirre, don't get me wrong: when I originally saw Razorland's cover, I cringed a little. It didn't speak to me, but it certainly told me everything I needed to know about the story within: dystopian future, romantic subplot. Cool. But the updated cover? I think is so much worse. It's generic, looks like it's targeting boys (which is a major misstep depending on how prominent the romance is in the story), and . . . well, it's just ugly. The title change is off the table, mind you, but still. This particular change blows my upcoming theory out of the water, but I'm going to make it:
The changes you see above have been for YA novels. No, it's not the same publisher for all three books. In the cases of Ryan and Westerfeld, the first book of the trilogies were released in hardcover and then received a makeover cover for the trade paperback edition, and then the second book's hardcover followed the design scheme of the makeover. One can argue (in fact, I'm sure this is the argument) that the first books may not have been selling as well as the publisher would like (which I think laughable, given what a huge splash Ryan made with her debut and given the fact that whatever Westerfeld touches seems to be publishing gold if his popularity is any indication), or maybe the original covers just weren't sitting well with the targeted audience. So they updated the look: in Ryan's case, the covers look more modern, with girls as models who look more like teens of today rather than the teens for the original covers, teen girls who clearly lack make-up. Or to put it more bluntly, you've got sexy girls versus non-sexy girls. In Westerfeld's case, they kept the neat mechanical design but added the protagonists to the covers, I suspect because YA readers are more attracted to faces than they are abstractions.
Which totally, totally, TOTALLY means that Aguirre's cover change is just befuddling. Hell, I'm betting that even Aguirre isn't happy with the change (just compare the entry to the change here to her unveiling of the original here. I find this to be common any time there's cover art that strikes me as inappropriate or ugly: if the author unveils it, they don't say much, other than to ask questions of their readers (what do you think?) and reminding them that they have little to no say in the decisions behind the cover art.
But I hate this trend. I understand that the right cover will grab the eyes of readers and sell far more books than a bad cover on the same story. I get that, I really do. But damn, people! The first sin is going from beautiful and compelling to something lesser, worse, or outright ugly. The second sin is making your cover so generic it's not going to stand out at all. Seriously, while one can argue that the cover for Enclave follows the same idea behind the original Westerfeld covers, at least the Westerfeld covers had color going for it, and a design made to make you look, and look again to figure out just what you're seeing.
I just wish, if I had to beg for a compromise, that they had one set of covers for the hardcovers and one set for the trades. That way, those who bought the hardcovers could keep their original design scheme for the whole series, you know?
So what are so cover art changes that you despise? Mind you, this isn't the place to discuss any sort of Race!Failures when it comes to getting the model's skin tone wrong (that's a whole different post with different pictures!) but rather, a case where the original cover art was, in your eyes, superior to the makeover the book received at a later date. The examples I gave above are all for YA books, but long-running fantasy series also suffer from cover art changes halfway through (George R.R. Martin and Terry Brooks), but usually in those cases, it's because the original covers were published at a time when certain art was working for the book but the latest release wouldn't do so well with that same kind of cover art (in other words, it's scary and admirable that Robert Jordan's covers haven't changed during the duration of his series. However, they've updated the covers for the e-books!). Mind you, we're all not going to agree that the later cover art is worse than the original (heck, some of you won't agree with my assessment for these YA titles!), but it's fun to see before and after pictures!
What are your most hated cover art changes?
Two things to note:
1) My examples are all US covers.
2) This is not a comparison post of how different the same book looks in the UK and the US, because that, like Race!Failures, is its own post and also, a buyer has to go out of his/her way to get the cover from the continent they're not living in. But UK covers are fine for examples, if the UK covers started out one way and changed so that you can't get the cover you prefer.