Tuesday 26 June 2012

Not the cover art post I wanted to write but... Oh well...

Everyone (me included) loves to go on about great/awful/meh' cover art is and you can understand why. It's there in your face, calling to you from the bookshelves and online; you can understand why we all want to talk about it.

It occurred to me though that while everyone talks about the front cover, I don't think I've ever seen anyone post about what's on the back. I mean, the back cover is a cover as well isn't it? And there's artwork there as well, why don't we talk about that along with the stuff on the front?
The reason that occurred to me is that my review copy of 'Bitter Seeds' (UK edition) turned up last night and the back cover looks absolutely awesome. The artwork, and the blurb, is all done up to look one of those military files you see in old war films; I'm a sucker for anything that has 'Classified' stamped on it in red :o) I also loved the way that the blurb is written 'report style'.

'Brilliant!' I thought, 'This could make for quite a cool post.' At least that's what I thought until I went looking for an image and couldn't find one. Because no-one talks about the artwork on the back of a book do they...

So, erm... yeah. Check out the back of 'Bitter Seeds' if you see it, I thought it was great :o)

In the meantime, here's the cover art for Charles Stross' 'The Apocalypse Codex' instead.

It's alright I guess. I didn't think much of what was on the back though... ;o)

1 comment:

April said...

No way to scan it in and post an image of that back cover?

I've seen a few back covers done up cleverly like that. There is a cover designer thinking about the process of buying a book: "oooh shiny pretty cover art!" Pick up book. Flip to back cover. Get bored and put it back on the shelf.

The Charles Stross on is ok. It is too busy though. They needed to simplify the design and allow the interesting stuff to draw you in.