This comment from Eric was in response to a comment about “mistakes” in the cover art for Bavarian Crisis and he used the opportunity to explain how the process works.
Having been part of the cover making process for Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond, we see the same things. Sometimes the artist has to make a cover with nothing more than a theme, while other times they have the whole story several months in advance. There are also definitely things within a story that make for a better (or worse) cover. I really liked my story “Something Old” in Issue 15 but it would have made a terrible cover because there’s no physical action. Despite being quite a short story, George Grant’s “Waving Goodbye” in Issue 11 was a good cover story because there was the lake equivalent of a tsunami. A big wave makes for a great cover!
I hope you enjoy Eric’s thoughts on cover art.
– Bethanne Kim (Publisher, Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine)
Baens Bar
02 October 2007 10:16
The truth is, if publishers let authors have the right to control the covers, it’d be a mess. An artist is far more likely to understand what makes for a good visual image than a writer.
Besides, book covers are NOT — not not not not not, and don’t ever forget it — anything except advertising. The real test of a cover image is whether it helps draw browsers to look at the book, NOT whether it’s a faithful reproduction of a specific scene in the novel. All I ever care about is that the cover not mislead people as to the type of book it is.
But the cover of BAVARIAN CRISIS certainly doesn’t do that. What people are essentially criticizing the artist for is that he was too intent on making clear that it was alternate history by putting the pilot in 17th century garb. But consider the end result if he hadn’t done that. You’d really have no way to tell the book was alternate history at all, from the rest of the cover.
As for the criticism that Maria Anna’s bosom is improperly displayed…
Well, yeah, but this is a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Consider the type of cockpit that would have been necessary to show her figure properly. Jeez. It’d look like one of those Bell helicopter glass bubbles. And then there’d be a furor that the plane was depicted in a completely unrealistic manner.
I like the cover myself. The one big problem it has is actually a design problem. The detail that Tom Kidd (he’s the 1632 series artist) put into the background got almost completely washed away and isn’t even visible at all in the wrong lighting. That detail added a lot to the painting, in my opinion.
Eric
02 October 2007 18:19
Question: Do artists have a copy of the book before they make the cover, or at least detailed information?
They usually get the manuscript, or at least chunks of it.
Not always, though. Gary Ruddell had to do two covers for me before I’d even written the books. The second time around, with The Tyrant, I told him to send me the cover illustration and I’d write a scene that fit the image. Which I did.
Eric
