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Book Covers



One of the most important things that affect the marketing of a book is the cover art. That’s what people see. It is supposed to catch the eye and make a person go, “hey, what’s this?” There are a lot of different schools of thought about what a cover should look like. Some people opt for extreme simplicity, like just a solid color with the title. There are artistic reasons for going with simplicity, and as long as it is an artistic reason that is driving it (and not a financial one) that is fine. It’s all art anyway, the novel and the cover. Other people go for a showy, eye-catching cover.

In the realm of science fiction and fantasy books there have been some wonderful covers and cover artists over the years. The Hugo Awards started giving awards to artists in 1958. Prominent cover artists include Frank Frazetta, Kelly Freas, Boris Vallejo, Michael Whelan, and many others who are giants in their field, but whom the public may not know by name (though they probably know their art).

In the early pulp fiction days of science fiction, covers often included a B.E.M. (Bug-Eyed Monster. It happened often enough that people came up with an acronym for it.) We may look at those covers today and think they were kind of cheesy, but hey, people back then were trying to capture attention, and nothing catches your eye like a good B.E.M. They eventually became a cliché and artists quit putting them on covers.

I have come to realize that I am in the same boat as many readers of the genre. There are many iconic covers that I can recall, but I have no idea who did the covers. Some of the covers I had to research:  Hogan’s Inherit the Stars (Darrel K. Sweet), Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Carl Lundgren), Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (Alex Ebel), and Varley’s collection The Persistence of Vision (Jim Burns). As I was looking into this, I noticed that many of the older books in my collection do not even list who did the cover. That seems a shame. Artists (all artist) have a hard enough time without being uncredited. Try it. Go to your bookcase (if you still have such a thing) and pick out your favorite science fiction or fantasy book and see if they give credit to the cover artist. 

When my novel Star Liner came out, the publisher found a cover for the eBook. It was kind of a retro-looking image and worked fine for the eBook, but when I went to get the book published in paperback, I wanted something different on the cover. Through a mutual acquaintance I was put in touch with Mary Madewell (marymadewell.com). We talked about my ideas for the cover and she sent some preliminary sketches. I told her what I liked and made some suggestion, and she made some suggestions. It was a nice collaboration that still left me in control. In the end, she came up with a cover for me that I liked very much. From the basic colors to the font, it all has to work together. I count myself fortunate because finding the right cover can be a challenge. I made sure that she got the cover art credit in my book.

Star Liner


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