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EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE |
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The Slow Death of Science Fiction Art
The 'Nest's readers respond to Stephen Hunt's plea for decent cover
art on SFF novels. Bad covers get named and shamed.
True, Spectrum SF is somewhat exclusive, but that is only to the extent that one has to pick up a copy at the local Brentano's and copy down the address to get the invitation poster. It does not have a website of its own per se and only publishes annually.
Having said that, you might tell Stephen that he can find all the art (published or otherwise) he wants to see through this Yahoo Groups website, where he can contact all the premier and fan artists/artshow managers/reviewers he wants. The list of subscribers include many artists belonging to the ASFA and many professional illustrators besides. They will tell him that while there is a declining number of publishers willing to pay for art, there is no dearth of self-published and small press publishers who do. Therri Just got the Crow today, and as always read the editorial first. Your choice of subject was magnificent! In your shoes, I too would have been tempted to once again climb the soapbox and rail about the pros and cons of the war (police action, out-of-the-goodness-of-our-hearts regime change, or simply fulfilling our father's dream ... sorry ... backing off the box now) you chose a rather obscure subject.
The point I'm trying to make is, god damn, you're right. What is science fiction and more so, fantasy, without the art. Now Stephen, I've been around the block a time or two (just turned 51 in March) and my younger days were filled with the art of the sixties and seventies. Bode and Finly covers on Galaxy, If, and Analog. It was the simplistic and dark cover that lured me to LOTR. Would Howard's Conan have ever taken off without Frank Frezetta? I guess that's the bottom line ... the allure, the first look of where an author is taking us. Nowadays, you see just another cheap ride advertised. Thanks for taking me back. Allen Cockrell How ironic that you should discuss cover art - or the lack thereof - at a time when that very issue has arisen in conjunction with our placing our books in bookstores. We use print-on-demand, as it was meant to be used, and we don't apologize for it. Needless to say, we aren't likely to see any of our books in B&N, Borders or any of their affiliates anytime soon, although we are listed on Amazon and in "Used, Rare and Out-of-Print" at BNOnline. Useful, that. :-( A few months back, one of our authors approached the manager of Powell's to find out what, if any, chance there was of having his book stocked, if only as a local author. He was informed sternly there was none, because the cover art was so garish and amateurish compared to the trade paperbacks from "real" publishers EVERYONE knew at first glance they were POD and EVERYONE knows POD published books are badly written, poorly edited and simply not worth bothering with. The real irony in this isn't that our books are both extremely well written and very thoroughly edited - better than some of what comes out of the major houses, in fact - but that a fair number of the small press trades he has on the shelf probably WERE printed by POD, which which are used to produce small print runs of 1-2000 by small publishers with equally small budgets. This came not long after one of our authors informed me he HATED our covers, too, and had polled two friends - one an artist who has done covers, the other an avid reader - who agreed with him wholeheartedly. The latter's comment was that with one or two exceptions our covers looked like they were done by "a nine-year-old whose favorite colors are pink and purple who loves unicorns and wants to be a princess or a ballerina when she grows up." My hubby commented he finds them overly garish for the most part as well. But the majority of people who've seen them and/or purchased books voluntarily tell us how wonderful the covers are. We consider them a selling tool - after all, most of our sales are done online where an entire page of the clip-art-derived stuff you mentioned would become one big blur. Which is the long way of saying that, while some of us actually like having pictures on the front that tell us something about what's inside, there is apparently at least a segment of the reading populace that actually prefers having covers that say nothing other than title and author. Low self-esteem perhaps? Afraid they'll get caught in public reading SF or romance instead of the latest literary masterpiece? Who knows? As for Borders - forget it. They've initiated category management to determine what they stock. A committee screens all submitted titles and decides what the public wants to read - hence the "invitation only" submissions. The supermarket style of bookselling. Liz Elizabeth Burton, Executive Editor/Acquisitions
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OTHER CONTENT - May 2003
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I
read with great interest Stephen Hunt's article about the
economic situation with book and magazine publishers cutting out
interior art and pasting in digital montages. 
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