# When the cover gets it wrong



## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Sometimes you see the cover of a book, and it is clear that the person who did the cover art never read the book or simply got it wrong. The only one that comes to mind right now is that cover of "The Color of Magic" that shows Twoflower as having four eyes (He doesn't, he has glasses. Though in this image it's really to small to make out).










And now I can't think of any others, though I know there are many. Ever noticed something like that?


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## AnitaDobs (Sep 18, 2012)

Masha du Toit said:


> Sometimes you see the cover of a book, and it is clear that the person who did the cover art never read the book or simply got it wrong. The only one that comes to mind right now is that cover of "The Color of Magic" that shows Twoflower as having four eyes (He doesn't, he has glasses. Though in this image it's really to small to make out).
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love Pratchett.

This isn't exactly the same really, but is more of an observation I guess, not quite the same as your example though.

The Fifty Shades of Grey cover, in fact has no grey scale whatsoever, apart from the lettering 'of Grey'. It's all blue scale, yet most people wouldn't realize it unless they really looked twice at it.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Ha! I never noticed that!  Its the kind of thing which would bug me too.


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## AnitaDobs (Sep 18, 2012)

Masha du Toit said:


> Ha! I never noticed that! Its the kind of thing which would bug me too.


Ya, it's a trick of the human mind. Blue at one of its extremes fades to grey, so its very close. That reminds me of a song... Showing my age


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

It's true that the cover design department often seems completely separate from the editing team and the author, at least judging by the covers. As for the 50 Shades of Grey comment - well, the way books in the same genre now have monochrome covers in shades of grey is a bit of a surprise for those who had a novel out with a monochrome grey and black cover just before these came out. Who would have thought a minimalist cover in monochrome black and white shades would signal erotica?


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

Why do you think so many romance novels have head cut off.. Hair color!


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## Adele Ward (Jan 2, 2012)

It's really annoying when they show faces on a cover as I really want to imagine the characters myself. So it's good to cut off their heads or show them from behind or blurry - but then the hair is wrong as you say. And then the film comes out and the characters look completely different again. Mind you, it's worse if a novelist doesn't describe the character early on then suddenly mentions the colour of their hair, eyes etc halfway through.


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## Seleya (Feb 25, 2011)

With publishing companies most of the time the cover artist isn't given the book at all. Somebody in the art department puts together a brief, sometimes a few reference pictures are added, if one is lucky a few relevant quotes and that's it.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

AnitaDobs said:


> The Fifty Shades of Grey cover, in fact has no grey scale whatsoever, apart from the lettering 'of Grey'. It's all blue scale, yet most people wouldn't realize it unless they really looked twice at it.


I just went to have a look. Good grief, you're right!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I've read at least a couple cases where sci-fi/fantasy authors were asked to write a novel to go with cover artwork the publisher had already purchased. I wonder if the artists ever read the resulting books and thought, "That's not what I painted!"


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## Carrie Rubin (Nov 19, 2012)

One of my pet peeves is when a book has been made into a movie, and then they release new versions of the book with the movie image replacing the original book cover. I'm not sure why it bugs me, but maybe it's because movies rarely live up to the books, and it seems to taint the book for me somehow. Maybe that's being too petty, but as much as I love Daniel Craig, I don't want to see him on the cover of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Here are two examples from books I read lately:



Apparently, it's not enough that the hero looks as if he works in a fetish club, though he's actually a historian turned reluctant revolutionary. No, the cover artist also depicted him blond, though every single description in the books describes the character as dark-haired and dark-eyed.

And they used the same artist for the entire series. Here is a later book:



The hero is still blond on the cover and dark-haired in the book. Meanwhile, the artist did get the heroine's hair colour and style right, since she is described as a redhead who wears her hair in a ponytail. However, the heroine of the actual book is described as "not conventionally pretty" and her hair is described as "ratty". And of course no one wears black leather fetish wear in the actual book.

Here's another example. Yes, historical romance covers are an easy target, but still...



The protagonists of this novel are a bakery assistant and a sailor and never wear elegant clothes throughout the novel. Besides, the woman's gown and hairstyle are anachronistic anyway. What is more, the hero has red hair in the book and black hair on the cover. As for the mansion in the background, the majority of the book takes place in a cottage and a bakery respectively. There is a mansion, but the villain lives there, so it's unlikely that the hero and heroine would kiss in his garden. And as for the title _Marriage of Mercy_ - there is no marriage in the book. The hero and heroine get engaged approx. three quarters through and plan to get married at the end, but there is no marriage.

And here are two older examples:



This is a truly stunning cover by a great cover artist. Too bad that the protagonist of the series is a black woman.



The covers for Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series are stunning. Alas, Mercy in the book as a single discrete tattoo, whereas the woman on the cover is tattooed all over.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

I bet they did, Nogdog! 
I was not aware that kind of thing happened.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Masha du Toit said:


> I bet they did, Nogdog!
> I was not aware that kind of thing happened.


It may have been more likely back in the '50s and '60s and the heyday of the scifi/fantasy "pulps", when a good Boris Vallejo cover might be worth an additional few thousand sales regardless of author and content.


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## gdae23 (Apr 30, 2009)

> One of my pet peeves is when a book has been made into a movie, and then they release new versions of the book with the movie image replacing the original book cover. I'm not sure why it bugs me, but maybe it's because movies rarely live up to the books, and it seems to taint the book for me somehow. Maybe that's being too petty, but as much as I love Daniel Craig, I don't want to see him on the cover of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."


I agree with you, and it seems even sillier when it involves a non-fiction book and a historical figure:



(However, I did greatly enjoy the Lincoln movie inspired by this book, and Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.)


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## Carrie Rubin (Nov 19, 2012)

gdae23 said:


> (However, I did greatly enjoy the Lincoln movie inspired by this book, and Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.)


Haven't seen that one yet, but I did see the one about Lincoln as a vampire slayer. Hmm, I'm thinking the writer bent the truth just a tad?...


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

I don't usually notice these things unless it's something super obvious, like the character having the wrong hair color on the cover. But my husband always complains that one of the characters on the Wheel of Time book covers is depicted incorrectly. He's an oger-like creature, so I imagine it could be tricky for the artist to figure out what the author had in mind there.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

NogDog said:


> I've read at least a couple cases where sci-fi/fantasy authors were asked to write a novel to go with cover artwork the publisher had already purchased. I wonder if the artists ever read the resulting books and thought, "That's not what I painted!"


I've also read a couple cases where the publisher has artwork without a book, a book without artwork, and, well...you know....


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

Krista D. Ball said:


> I've also read a couple cases where the publisher has artwork without a book, a book without artwork, and, well...you know....


I think that's known as a bastard child. 

ETA: Hey! We're allowed to say bastard. Who knew?


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

JRTomlin said:


> I think that's known as a bastard child.
> 
> ETA: Hey! We're allowed to say bastard. Who knew?


Hmm. . . .we'll have to fix that.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

This is why we can't nice things


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## purplepen79 (May 6, 2010)

NogDog said:


> It may have been more likely back in the '50s and '60s and the heyday of the scifi/fantasy "pulps", when a good Boris Vallejo cover might be worth an additional few thousand sales regardless of author and content.


There are a couple books where I've liked the cover art quite a bit more than the book -- some of Michael Whelan's covers come to mind. That man can paint and make anything come to life! His dragons always look like they're going to fly off the cover and into reality.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

Carrie Rubin said:


> One of my pet peeves is when a book has been made into a movie, and then they release new versions of the book with the movie image replacing the original book cover. I'm not sure why it bugs me, but maybe it's because movies rarely live up to the books, and it seems to taint the book for me somehow. Maybe that's being too petty, but as much as I love Daniel Craig, I don't want to see him on the cover of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."


It does make it seem like it's not quite the "real" version, like it's the version of the book for those who watched the movie rather than the version for readers. It's not completely rational, of course, but in the world of paper books, the paper copy that you have makes some statements.


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## Ergodic Mage (Jan 23, 2012)

Krista D. Ball said:


> This is why we can't nice things


The bastard child gets them all?

I don't pay attention to covers much unless they are battle scenes at which point I go bonkers. A knight on a horse leaning over to stab a person with his sword?


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Ergodic Mage said:


> The bastard child gets them all?


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Ergodic Mage said:


> The bastard child gets them all?
> 
> I don't pay attention to covers much unless they are battle scenes at which point I go bonkers. A knight on a horse leaning over to stab a person with his sword?


Heh...a pet peeve of mine is anyone on a fantasy cover wielding a sword that (a) is way to heavy to be practical to use for more than 5 seconds (if at all) and (b) with all sorts of baroque spikes, hooks, etc. that would make it not only unwieldy, but likely about as dangerous to the wielder as it is to the enemy.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

NogDog said:


> Heh...a pet peeve of mine is anyone on a fantasy cover wielding a sword that (a) is way to heavy to be practical to use for more than 5 seconds (if at all) and (b) with all sorts of baroque spikes, hooks, etc. that would make it not only unwieldy, but likely about as dangerous to the wielder as it is to the enemy.


The first LARP* I did had a character with a giant hammer with a spike at one end. Sorta like this:










It's just foam and PVC piping, but man alive, I don't know how many of us had to duck to avoid being hit in the face with that pointy end!

*Live Action Role Play


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I just love that observation about Shades of Grey.  I have to admit I had not noticed it before.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Carrie Rubin said:


> One of my pet peeves is when a book has been made into a movie, and then they release new versions of the book with the movie image replacing the original book cover. I'm not sure why it bugs me, but maybe it's because movies rarely live up to the books, and it seems to taint the book for me somehow. Maybe that's being too petty, but as much as I love Daniel Craig, I don't want to see him on the cover of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."


I somehow missed this comment. I totally agree. It sort of takes the magic away for me


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## Carrie Rubin (Nov 19, 2012)

Masha du Toit said:


> It sort of takes the magic away for me


Agreed!


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## mom133d (aka Liz) (Nov 25, 2008)

This is a great argument for ebooks. We never have to look at the cover unless we go to it. 

But yes, it irks me as well. Especially hair color. The author had a reason for mentioning it, and some go to great lengths to make sure you know what a character's hair looks like. 

Dara, I think I know the character your husband is talking about. Loial, the Ogier. The cover looks nothing like how I picture him in my mind. The image on the cover of the WoT Role Playing Game is a bit closer.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Actually, I've just thought of another one. "protector of the small" by Um. Ok I'll google that in a minute.

Anyway. The book is about a girl going through military training, and there are multiple descriptions of her being stocky and not a feminine girl.

There's more than one edition, but the one I read showed her as this delicate, fragile looking beauty. Not a bad looking cover but just wrong. And it irritated me that the heroine just HAS to be shown as that kind of pretty. Wait, maybe it was by Tannith Lee?

No! It was Tamora Pierce


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## Rob May (Jun 18, 2012)

One of my favourite sites is http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/-fantasy and sci-fi cover art that's so wrong it'll leave you crying with laughter.


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## Steverino (Jan 5, 2011)

Adele Ward said:


> Who would have thought a minimalist cover in monochrome black and white shades would signal erotica?


Where I come from, they call that dis-expectation.

I think it's a good strategy for a buzzy book, where new readers have already heard rumors about it.


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## Lyndl (Apr 2, 2010)

Ergodic Mage said:


> The bastard child gets them all?


Only if they're also the red-headed step-child !


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## Guest (Dec 18, 2012)

NogDog said:


> a sword that (a) is way to heavy to be practical to use for more than 5 seconds (if at all)


That depends on if the character is supposed to be superhuman (or the equivalent of a comic book peak human, which is practically superhuman ) though. Like one of the girls in my sig who can run around carrying a 600 pound sumo and trade punch for punch with a 400 pound superhuman slasher movie style killer, she could probably handle a giant ceremonial sword almost like it was a normal one.


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