This weekend I will be posting the newest ugly covers for our third UC competition. You decide who is the winner by your votes, and I will have to beg Tam, once again, to count your votes and award a winner for this competition. However I need more covers. I have a few …. but I need more, more, more. So bloggers please send me your ugly covers by Friday, October 9.
In case you have forgotten, here are the two previous winners –
2nd ugly covers winner
first ugly covers winner
I’ll be honoured to count. 🙂
Tam
Since you did such a wonderful job on the last 2 competitions there’s no one else we would like to have at the helm.:)
My nominee is Sins of Arrogance by India Harper
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My nominee is Sins of Arrogance by India Harper
Taken from your carousel: Dark Elves and Mercenary’s Tale seem to me to be terribly, even clumsily, painted. Beyond the Norm, on the other hand, is a very effective, downright sleek cover cover painting.
And a question. Why hasn’t the cover of Here, And Always Have Been made its way into one of the carousels?
Ken
I’ll answer your last question first. I only currently have a 116 x 166 cover (I remember you sent me another much larger cover which I can’t find so please re-send it and I’ll re-size it to 200 x 300 – that’s the only size that works in the carousel.
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Re ugly covers, there’s no shortage. I can go to my favorite sources and find literally hundreds of covers that fit this criteria. I sometimes think that the publishers instruct their artists to produce the ugliest covers they can – that seems to be the only explanation that makes sense, based on what I see as cover art.
I’m nominating this one:
http://www.rosaromance.com/science-fiction/journey-to-diir/journey-to-diir/prod_86.html
It’s a real beaut. Actually all that publisher’s cover look pretty gruesome, but as a sci-fi fan this one stood out.
Diane said: My nominee is Sins of Arrogance by India Harper…
In all seriousness…..huh??? Really??? This is what is considered an “ugly cover”??? If so, then I must be living on another planet. I guess it’s all a matter of individual taste.
Ken
Usually only the ugliest covers make it and if Sins of Arrogance can’t compare to the others it might not make the final list.:)
Okay… Sins of Arrogance may not be the ugliest cover 🙂 But for me it is a spectacular example of a BAD cover. 1) the figures and cityscape are so low resolution that they look out of focus, 2) but they are all out of focus in their own way, so it screams of poor Photoshop skills (that is so easily corrected), 3) the models don’t look anything like the characters described in the book; hell, one of them has a 1980’s mullet but the plot takes place in present day! and finally, 4) it is just sooo cheesy! – but the story itself is pretty good… it is unfortunate to think some people may pass on it because of the tacky cover… now that’s ugly to me.
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(thank you for allowing me my soapbox – bad covers bug the hell out of me as you’ve noticed 🙂
Diane
I had an online discussion earlier in the week about cover art with two pubs. and they both said that book covers are not intended to represent what’s in the book – they are strictly a marketing tool!! So my next question was, why bother then to ask the authors for input into the process of designing covers for their books? I still have to get a satisfactory answer to my question.
But the cover for Sins of Arrogance negates what the publishers told you. There definitely was some effort to reflect what is in the book. The cover shows two men holding guns like cops over a skyline and the book is about two cops working in the inner-city.
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It is one thing when the cover designer just has bad tastes (like your previous cover winners), but the cover for SOA could have been saved simply by selecting stock photography from this decade and correctly blending the image resolution.
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I realize most publishers are not highly profitably yet and don’t have the money to invest in custom covers based on the specs of each book, but that doesn’t mean the generic covers don’t need to look professional… there are thousands of talented unemployed graphic designs out there right now, so there is no excuse for bad Photoshop.
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(okay… I am burning my soapbox now 🙂
Diane, it’s also sometimes not possible to locate stock photos that actually work or match an author’s descriptions perfectly. I know my cover artist won’t spend more than several hours hunting down photographs. That one stock photo of the guy pointing the gun at the camera is supposed to look that way also…I’ve seen that photo on another cover…with the gun in focus and the guy holding it slightly blurred, which is what the human eye does when looking at something. It’s not a matter of resolution, it’s a matter of the actual photograph having that dramatic effect. And to make the man in the background blurry is logical, since if the first guy is blurry, then how could the background cop be in perfect focus–that would make it look bizarre because the human eyes don’t work that way. I find these “armchair quarterbacking” comments so amusing. Diane, maybe you should apply for a job as a cover artist?