Sun?

[jhetley]

Light rain again this morning, but the sun has made a valiant effort (sorta like a Plymouth Valiant, I'm afraid, a good car but nowhere near exciting...) to come out and dry things up a bit. The rivers won't crest until tonight or tomorrow, at which time it may be raining again.

Finished the first pass through the copyedit, nothing to raise my blood pressure there. As usual, I had to exert my authorial veto to "stet" a couple of places where I _meant_ to do that. If I split an infinitive, I did it on purpose, dammit...

I note that our beloved Prezzie now proposes to move Social Security into the welfare division of national government, adjusting benefits by a "means" test. In other words, if you (hypothetical USA-you) act like a responsible adult and save for your old age, you lose the guv-ment pension.

**elevates both middle fingers in the direction of Washington**

Remain bemused by the cover art for DRAGON'S EYE. If you look closely enough, you'll find a reflection of a castle in the water. Thing is, you kinda hafta know it's there in order to find it, an excess of subtlety for grabber-cover purposes. And it's the wrong castle -- I describe Morgans' Castle as a single plain stone tower, not the multi-tower'd critter with curtain wall etc that you can puzzle out. Thus do authors nit-pick their covers.

(And the dragon pendent is wrong, too -- the dragon should curl _around_ the gemstone, and it should look more Norse or Celtic, simpler, older, and it shouldn't have wings, and....)

But then, a cover's job is to sell books. No necessary relation to the contents.

Comments

[lolleeroberts.livejournal.com]

I tend to notice things like a cover that looks like someone actually read the book. I realize that anecdotes are not statistics, but I'd be surprised if that weren't the case with many sf/f readers. I think we tend to be nitpicky nerd types who read a description then look at the cover and think, "Not even close."

But that could just be me.

[98.livejournal.com]

Naw. I do it too.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

we tend to be nitpicky nerd types who read a description then look at the cover and think, "Not even close."

Aflak!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

The problem with "artist who actually read the book" is that most cover artists haven't. Even the cover designer and the art director may not have read it. Not part of the arcane inner process of publishing....

I would like to take this opportunity to proclaim, to all to whom these presents come, that authors have little (at my level *NOTHING*) to do with the design of bookcovers or the selection of cover art. I refer you once more to that little ditty, findable by a quick googling, "There's a bimbo on the cover of the book."

cover art

[prophet-marcus.livejournal.com]

Seems to be true. I remember Larry Niven going on about how the cover artist for "The Integral Trees" actually did read the book and then sat down and talked with Niven before doing the art and how incredibly unusual it all was.