By Gollancz author Sam Sykes
Sam's latest book, Tome of the Undergates, is published on 15th April 2010.
Many people seem to possess a romanticized ideal of what it means to be a fantasy author. The very mention of the word causes peoples’ heads to bloat with images of bespectacled scholars sipping tea and tapping on a typewriter whilst spending most of their time rejecting desperate pleas to have them come and speak to moon-faced, wide-eyed masses.
Tome of the Undergates
To this fictional author, the idea of cover art is simply a fleeting fancy: an idle afterthought suited to nothing more than binding a papery opus together.
As you may have guessed, the truth about authors is less impressive. To a man (or woman), we are frequently smelly, undersocialized, gormless light-fearing morlocks with far too high an opinion of ourselves and far too low an opinion of our peers.
The truth about cover art, therefore, is much worse. Far from being a pleasant afterthought, or a lovely complement to the finished product, your book, and thusly your livelihood and your very soul relies on cover art and the three factions it must simultaneously titillate.
At the top of the “to thrill and possibly molest” list are the viewing public at large: the 80% of people who will buy the actual book. Long ignored for lack of a coherent, collective voice for what they desired from a cover, it was decided by the publishing industry as a whole that the public simply didn’t know what it wanted. One fateful day, one fateful book, that all changed.
The public gazed upon a hooded man.
The public demanded ninjas.
Considered to be the Philosopher’s Stone of the fantasy fictional world, the appeal of ninjas, with their swarthy hoods and shining blades and lithe bodies, did not go unnoticed. The hood, and the man inside it, caught in the publishing world like salmonella at an Orcish barbecue. The public was delighted, the artists were grateful, the publishers were pleased.
The bloggers were pissed.
As diverse as their tastes are and as whimsical and leisurely as their wanton hatreds find themselves, bloggers share two things in uniform: a fierce love for all things bearded and a bone-deep fear of hooded men.
Understandably, as the common blogger in its larval stage resembles something like a four-foot-tall amicable spider-monkey, the sight of a tall, powerful man in a mask tends to evoke fear in the gentle and docile blogger, who prefers sights of idyllic landscapes and sumptuous feasts.
And, naturally, both preferences are at odds with those of the true fantasy fan, who craves cryptic, arcane symbols on his covers: the closer to a Rorschach test, the better.
These demands may seem a bit many to absorb for the average fantasy author. Rather, a true fantasy author must love his fans with such fierce, disturbing devotion that he can singlehandedly create a cover with the intrigue of a hood, the placidity of a wilderness scene and the utter obtuseness of a symbol.
Friends…I am no average fantasy author.
Behold....
The alternative cover for Tome of the Undergates.
