When I wrote the post for Footsteps, I mentioned that I had not read “Brightness Reef”. The original art by Michael Whelan looked so gorgeous that I decided to go ahead and read the book and see if it matched the visions my mind evoked, based on just the cover.
I was disappointed to see that the book cover itself didn’t highlight the gorgeous art as I would have hoped. They had a cropped out image which looked washed out and missed some of the elements that I found intriguing in the original artwork. But maybe that’s just me?
I’m still reading “Brightness Reef” but the cover made me think more about all the books and authors I’ve discovered just based on the cover art …
For example, there’s Terry Pratchett. I’d never read any Pratchett (way back in the 90s) when I came across a copy of his “Wyrd Sisters” in one of my book hunting expeditions.
The cover was so colourful, interesting, and had so much detail that I was instantly captivated and wanted to know what the story inside was. I bought it, read it, and have been a Terry Pratchett fan ever since 🙂
But I didn’t forget Josh Kirby either. His artwork has haunted me ever since too. Any time I see a Josh Kirby cover, I generally recognize it immediately and I’d buy the book whether I’ve read that particular author before or not.
I went back and checked, and there’s a whole gallery of Josh Kirby covers here. Looking at that, I realize that there are a lot of his covers that I wouldn’t have known were by Josh Kirby since it doesn’t have the distinctive style he has in his Discworld covers and some of the later work that I did recognize 😛 So my thought that I’d recognize his covers anywhere apparently was pure conceit. But I still did buy a fair number of books because they had Josh Kirby covers. In particular, I remember covers for both Esther Freisner and Tom Holt that Josh Kirby had done, but I think I had already read both of them before I discovered the Josh Kirby covers.
Speaking of Josh Kirby connections, I was going to mention Dan McGirt and his first Jason Cosmo novel because I came across Dan in a Twitter interaction (if I remember correctly) when I was trying to promote my first book. I loved the cover art for his book so much, that I got it.
The connection with Josh Kirby? Oh, yes! When I read the Jason Cosmo novels back then (probably 20 years ago) I knew that Dan had traditionally published at least some books in the Jason Cosmo series previously. But what I didn’t know till today was that his original publications of the books had Josh Kirby covers. The curious connections that we find 🙂
When I wrote my first book, I was determined to have a great cover for it. I looked around for artists who did work at least similar to Josh Kirby and found somebody who’d done a beautiful painting of a Discworld character. I forget which one — this was 20 years ago. I contacted them through a mutual acquaintance and inquired about doing a cover for my book. They wanted $2,000.
At that time in life, I think we had a total of $3,000 in the bank 😛 So sadly, I couldn’t get him to do the artwork I would have liked. Would my books have done better with that artwork? I have no idea. But I did go through so many covers for my first book and while I’m happy with the latest one, I can’t but wonder how it would have looked with a Josh Kirby cover? Sadly, Josh Kirby is no more and even if I could afford him, I don’t think I will find out now.
But here are some of the covers that I did end up using over the years 🙂
The very first cover, I did in a 3D program called Carrera which is not even around any longer. There was a cover between #1 and #2, that I don’t have access to at the moment — I think it was a stock image from Amazon? Cover #2 was a stock Adobe image I think. We never used cover #3 but it was, if I recall correctly, a collaboration between my wife and I — I came up with the original concept, but she made it much better 🙂 And cover #4 is by my wife.
What does that have anything to do with the main thrust of this post? Probably not much. But I wanted to give a personal illustration of how cover art can change the feel of a book at first glance and since I had all the covers handy, it felt like a good way to go.
But one thing I’ve always felt about book covers is that they should tell something of the story inside. I’ve never been a fan of the abstract covers that publishers seem to go for these days — probably because it saves them money on cover art? I want a beautiful cover which catches your eye and makes you curious about the story inside, darn it!
There’s so many more cover stories (no pun intended) that I could go into, but one other cover has stood out for me over the years.
Perhaps predictably, it’s another Michael Whelan cover 🙂
Every time I see this cover, I want to read the story. I want to know what is going on. And the full image is even better than the cover art 🙂
I’ve still not read the book for whatever reason, and I’ve purchased at least one copy of the book, perhaps several, if I’m not mistaken. And that is the power of good cover art!
