Do you feel that nifty tingle in the air? It must be the excitement of knowing that we’re in the middle of voting for the first annual Lousies award, and the will of the people shall be revealed!
In this installment of New Covers For Old 2021, there are some improvements that just warm your heart to see. Then there are a couple of recalcitrant types who will “change” as long as they don’t have you, y’know, change.
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“Soldier’s Lady”—again, only an apparent improvement since the original was so godawful.
“Racing Through Darkness”—pretty good!
“Are You Still Submitting…”—yes and this is one of the reasons why (though I will give the author credit for starting off his book with some really good advice)
“Jade Owl”—well, there it is.
“The Nan Tu”—Nope.
“House of Green Waters”—Nope—as Mr. Patterson continues his nonstop argument in favor of traditional publishing…
“Siege”—Not bad!
“Smugglers”—Oh, just stop it!
“Keeping Secrets”—Nope.
“Yorktown”—well, I see a lot of effort went into this redesign.
Is that Robert Downey Jr. on the new cover of Soldier’s Lady?
What? I think you need to zoom that. That dude in the “new” cover looks nothing like RDJ.
I tend to look at all of these covers (and the other before-and-afters this week) as if I were an art director at a publishing company. To that end, one of the questions I ask myself is: Would I accept a cover as finished? Would I pay the designer for it?
In which case, only “Racing Through Darkness” is the only one I’d pay for. The rest, honestly, if a cover designer submitted one of those to a client for approval, I’d fire them. Period.
I need to point out that the “Soldier’s Lady” author uses an avatar from Second Life, presumably her own, as an author photo. Classy touch.