Popular (for some reason) don’t-you-call-me-a-fantasy-author fantasy author Terry Goodkind has caused something a kafuffle for deciding to be rather an unprofessional arse and openly mock the art of the cover of his latest book. Which, as the artist of said cover has expressed, is kind of not cool and a bit of a dick move.
I am kind of bemused at the criticism of the cover in any event - as far as a Fantasy cover goes it looks pretty good. Certainly better than most - the only reason I could think to criticise this cover is because, maybe, the characters don’t look like this? The cover isn’t an accurate portrayal of the characters
One conversational thread I did see came from the author team Ilona Andrews (who I have fanpoodled many many many times before) about the nature of covers and what their purpose is which I honestly hadn’t even considered (as a reader of ebooks, I rarely, if ever, even look at covers any more):
Cover artists do not typically read the books. They work from a summary. They often work on multiple covers at any given time. @deharme has not done anything that was short of professional standard. More in thread.— Ilona Andrews (@ilona_andrews) March 1, 2018
Covers artists work for the publisher, not the author. Their job is to produce a cover that markets a book, not, necessarily accurately depicts the characters as the author envisages them.
And though I hadn’t considered this before, I think this is exactly right, especially in relation to genre markers.
Woman, weapon, supernatural elements, brooding colours, inexplicable squatting? A definite Urban Fantasy. This cover is better than a blurb for telling me what this book is about
Cogs, iron, dirigible, fashion - we have a steampunk!
These are excellent genre signifiers, even when your book is super unique or different, reflecting theme, genre and tone is probably far far far more important to advertise the book than whether the clothing is accurate, whether the hero is too tall, etc. I certainly think they’re more important at pulling in new readers - especially since people who KNOW what your character looks like are already invested and the cover doesn’t need to pull them in
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying covers are above criticism. We’ve done it many many many times ourselves obviously and we also firmly stand on the idea that EVERYTHING is open to criticism. A book cover can definitely fail to accurately portray the nature of the book, can push prejudiced tropes or erase minorities or can be just plain artistically awful. These are definitely issues and fair game for criticism (hence why we HAVE).
But failing to direct the criticism properly (the artist creates a cover as directed - it’s not their fault) and by failing to actually explain his criticism in a reasonable manner (including a detailed discussion of how, for example, the cover failed to represent the characters and why he disapproved of it. Also, of course, doing this to your own cover artist is an ultra dick move. Even if you are going to criticise your own cover there are much better ways to do it - as Justine Larbalestier did in objecting to the whitewashing of Liar both clearly criticising the publisher and expressing why it was a problem.
Seeing the backlash, Goodkind decide to backtrack and claim that he objected to the cover because it was Sexist.
Um… really?
I mean, for the Fantasy Genre? THIS cover is sexist?
We don’t have gratuitous exposed skin. She’s not in a provocative pose. She’s not wearing boobplate. Sure the heels are a bit silly but compared to many it’s pretty mild.
As for sexist - well, ulterior motive: I once had the very great misfortune of reading the Sword of Truth Series back in 2010 before we started Fangs for the Fantasy and wrote about my… opinions… on that book which I am going to take the opportunity to repost now. Because 1) if I had to suffer my way through this series I’m going to get maximum traction from it and 2) I think it’s vitally important to look at the work of Terry Goodkind when he decides to clutch his pearls about the “sexism” of this cover.
