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For those of you you who didn’t read the Guardian article on book covers, it said booksellers (who sometimes influence publishers in their choice of cover) think that generic mass-market-appeal covers outsell more offbeat covers or striking covers (and this is not just for sf/f books either). The article indicated that what matters is not the actual accuracy of a cover re the story within, but rather that it implies the general type of story – even when it may be quite inaccurate as to theme and atmosphere.

Remember, the question was: which cover would make you pick up the book with a view to buying? In other words, which cover piques that initial interest… The Guardian article suggests that browsers spend a mere .8 of a second glancing at the cover.

And the runaway winner is: Harper Voyager Australia! With artwork by Greg Bridges, design by Gayna Murphy, the cover won an industry award. 61% of you would pick up this book.

The cover is quite truthful: the book is a peek at an island world, there are ships and a bird is important. There is swordplay and sea creatures. In fact the porthole effect is a clever comment on the framing of the story – an outsider, an ethnographer, comes to record the life story of a swordswoman. He’s a bit of a biased fellow and sees everything through his rigid point of view and completely misses the thrust of much of her tale.

Second was the German cover from Blanvalet. I don’t yet know who the artist is, as I have not yet received the actual book.

Very generic indeed. Lovely design and colour and atmosphere to it, but doesn’t tell you much about the story except that swords and magic is involved. There is no magical staff in the book. And I don’t think there were any cloaks either, but cloaks are very much the in-thing at the moment. It’s not clear if the central figure is a man or a woman.

39% of you would pick this one up. (Remember that those taking part in the poll had the option of picking up more than one title.)

Only a little way behind the German translation above, was this French translation from Pygmalion.36% of you would pick this one up.

Also generic, but it captures more of the essence of the story than the German cover. The heroine does carry a very special sword. The reflection on the sword shows islands and ships, and the background is a manuscript – the scientific reports of the ethnographer, perhaps.

The artist was Alain Brion.

Next is another French cover, from J’ai Lu, a little retro in design. The artist is Arnaud Cremet.

15% of you would pick this one up. It is the first to definitely have a go at portraying the main character, Blaze Halfbreed, who is a brown-skinned islander swordswoman. I did not envision her dressed this way, though…

The background shows a map of an island and navigational aids.

Then comes the U.S. Ace (Penguin) with this representation of Blaze by Scott Grimando and design by Annette Fiore. 5% of you would pick this one up. And every single review it garnered complained that the cover was at complete odds with the feel of the story. Yes, there was a sea creature that could be ridden, but there was something about the half-clad woman in that pose that really rubbed readers up the wrong way.

And last, the Russian cover. I can’t tell you the artist because I can’t read the cyrillic lettering. Very generic, does show the importance of swords and magic in this story, and there was an elderly man who died.

A bit ironic though, seeing as one of my aims with The Aware was to tell a story that had NONE of the usual tropes apart from swords: no horses and no quests/journeys being at the top of the list. The whole book is set on a small treeless island with one town. There were no pterodactyls, either. Or armour.

This cover didn’t do too well with you all, even though it is arguably the most generic of all. It garnered one vote.

The limitations of the poll? There were only 63 people replying, and probably a majority were influenced by having read the book first. Still, it’s interesting to see what intrigued most.

Thank you for replying!
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Over in the sidebar of the blog, there’s a poll. Tell me which of these covers (and you can choose more than one if you like) would be most likely to make you pick up the book (always assuming the language was not an issue) with a view to buying it?
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Here’s the Australian Harper Voyager cover for comparison:

Which do I like better?
Can’t say. They both say very different things about the book. The UK cover (artist: Larry Rostant) emphasizes the darker, more desperate side of the story; the Australian (artist:
Vincent Chong) puts the emphasis on the brutal nature of a land that has insufficient water, and on the magic that may – or may not – be its saving. They both say true things about the story.

I do know this: I am the luckiest author around to have not one, but two such talented cover artists and two dedicated design teams from two different publishers to work on the same novel.
And thanks Karen, for the great quote!!

Read what Justin Larbalestier has to say about the cover of one of her YA books.

Readers in the USA have also complained to me that my character Blaze also suffered from whitewashing*, especially insulting to me as I am the mother of children who are not white, and I quite deliberately depicted a main female protagonist who was not either.

But authors often don’t get to choose.

* Actually, she is sort of vaguely dusky on the cover of The Aware (book1)
The woman on the cover of Gilfeather (book 2) is supposed to be the blonde, Flame – but she was drawn with two arms wielding a sword (ok, one of them is blue!), which is not remotely like the description of Flame…the woman never picks up a sword, for heaven’s sake. Quite apart from the fact that she loses an arm early on in the first novel. So a lot of readers think she is supposed to be Blaze.

Ever wondered if they are honest?

There’s been a few posts on the subject just lately: Justine Larbalestier and John Scalzi (read the comments section) and Meg Rosoff.

The consensus seems to be that “if I don’t like it, I won’t blurb it.” I must admit, though, I have read quite a few books that have loads of praise on the cover but have left me thinking, “Did these guys ever read this??”

Getting my booked “blurbed” by an author never crossed my mind when I started out. I have still never asked someone to do one for me. I never will.

So, how did some of my books get to have another author’s comment on it?

Havenstar English cover: None. But it did have a 10/10 rating from Starburst magazine mentioned.
Havenstar German cover: None. It has a quote from Publisher’s Weekly about being in the upper league of fantasy
The Aware Australian cover: “Witty, gritty and enthralling” comment from Trudi Canavan. This one has a story behind it. Voyager sent a pre-publication print to a Melbourne sff specialist bookseller. He didn’t have time to read it, so passed it to Trudi, author of The Black Magician Trilogy. She loved it and wrote a magical blurb, bless her. At this stage, I had not met her.
Other Isles of Glory covers – even American ones – have repeated this or give quotes gleaned from one of more Australian reviews. Happily, I have been reviewed fairly well in Oz so there was plenty to choose from…

Heart of the Mirage Australian cover: Quotes Trudi on The Isles of Glory trilogy “Hard to put down. It’ll keep you up late and make you stay home all day”
Heart of the Mirage UK cover: Quotes Kate Elliot saying : “Exciting, robust adventure. Glenda Larke is a fabulous writer.” Another story here. I read some nice things Kate had to say about my previous books on the blog Deep Genre, which just blew me away – because I admire her writing so much. We have the same editor at Orbit UK, and he read what she had to say and asked if she would mind writing the blurb for the new book.
The Shadow of Tyr UK cover: Quotes Karen Miller saying, “Glenda Larke is magical. If you don’t read her, you’re missing out a treat”. (Karen is much more famous than me, so I feel she lost out when I was asked for a blurb for her first book in the UK.)
Song of the Shiver Barrens UK cover: Karen Miller’s quote on the front, and Kate Elliott’s on the back.

As you can see, I have benefited from some really splendid writers being kind enough to write a blurb – and each of them was asked by the editor, not me. Similarly I wrote a blurb for Karen Miller when an editor asked me. And yes, it was honest. I had already read the book in the Australian edition and was delighted to be asked.

So my question now is this: do you readers take any notice of famous writers writing nice things for a book cover?

[Russian covers? Absolutely no idea what any of them says…]