Category Archives: book covers

Published: June 14, 2008

Photo Contest Part IX – Covers and Cosplay.

Well folks, we’re almost at the end of the photos. I hope you’ve had as much fun as I have.

Our final category is: “Best Cosplay.” But before we get to that, there was a small subcategory of photos that I haven’t included yet: photos commenting about the covers of the book itself.

This is the real hot-button question, of course. How much naked man chest do you prefer?

A lot of people weighed in on the subject.

Even to the point of dressing up as their preferred cover.

And here you see my clever segue into the “Best Cosplay” category. Look like anyone you know?

Maybe this will help. When I started this contest up on Facebook, someone else took young Kvothe’s posed picture and photoshopped him onto the cover. I think both the model and the photoshopper deserve an honorable mention prize.

Some of the pictures people took told a story.

Here, for example, we have an epic battle taking place for the love of a beautiful woman….

Or not.

Interesting side note: this is the look that women have been consistently giving me for the last 15 years. Admittedly, they usually have a pretty good reason….

I was especially tickled by the people who staged scenes from the book. This one is subtle, and the reference is easier to catch in the following version:

Here’s the strapping young man we saw at the beginning of Part VIII, putting those abs to good use. Extra points for rescuing the lady and the book.

Anyone who’s read The Name of the Wind should be able to identify this scene. But what really impressed me was the hard, white Dalonir cheese that they went to the trouble of including in the picture. That’s the level of detail that gets you a pair of lovely runner-up prizes: one for Kvothe and one for Auri.

This is hot. The best part? Kvothe’s drawn-on abs.

Winner. Such a sweet picture. I’m guessing most of you can identify this scene too.

We have a good degree of accuracy here too. Denna is all, “You’re so dreamy.” And Kvothe is thinking, “I wish Denna liked me…. Hey, are those cumulus or cirrus clouds.?”

Congrats. Both Kvothe and Denna can have a fabulous prize of their choosing.

This is so not cannon. Still, it’s nice to see poor Kvothe get a little love…

Remember, if you’ve won, you need to follow the guidelines I laid down at the beginning of the contest in order to claim your swag. Now that all the winners are finally posted, I’m going to go through and start packaging and mailing things out.

Well…. I shouldn’t say that ALL the winners are posted. There was one entry so amazing that I had to give it a post all its own. We’ll see that next week, so stay tuned.

pat

Also posted in contests, fan coolness

|posted by Pat 13 Comments

Published: March 6, 2008

Ask the Author #5: Where can I buy the new version of the book?

Since I posted up the new cover for The Name of the Wind, folks have been asking me where they can buy a copy.

Doubtless some of you want a copy of this book because it is clearly A Novel. I also know a lot of folks want this cover because the style will more closely match the hardcover for The Wise Man’s Fear:

I understand your desire, and I feel your pain. I wanted this new cover too, and even though I’m the author, I still had a bitch of a time locating it. I had to hunt around for weeks before I managed to get my hands on one.

The truth is, I don’t know where these new copies will be showing up. These are the books that currently live in the warehouse. If a store orders a book from the warehouse, this cover will probably get delivered to them. But if the bookstore orders from a distributor, the distributor might not have this fifth printing in stock. They might still have first printings, or third printings. It’s a crap shoot.

However, since so many people were asking about it, I worked something out with a guy I met out in Seattle last year. His name is Shawn Speakman, and he runs a business that sells signed books over the magical interweb.

So, when I head out to Seattle at the end of the month for Norwescon, I’m going to swing by his place and sign a bunch of books for him. If you want one you can go order a copy at his store.

Please note that I’d be more than happy to personalize your book for you, free of charge. Just make sure you enter what you’d like me to write when you your order your book.

Now, the more astute of you that have doubtless already clicked on the link and noticed that Shawn is charging 29.95 for the books. Five bucks more than the cover price. This isn’t because he’s a greedy son of a bitch. No. Shawn is a high-class gentleman. I know this because Shawn is giving me that five bucks to help offset the cost of my plane ticket out there. If not for that, I wouldn’t have been able to justify making the trip out to the coast.

Lastly, as an added bonus for those of you who have been dying to get hold of a copy of the Illustrated, Annotated, College Survival Guide, Shawn will be selling some of those too.

Those will be signed by me, and each will have a cool doodle and a signature by my longtime friend, illustrator, and co-conspirator, Brett Hiorns.

Later all,

pat

Also posted in appearances, College Survival Guide

|posted by Pat 20 Comments

Published: March 4, 2008

Italian Style – Part Two.

Okay, before we do anything else, I feel like I should mention that I’ve updated the TOUR SCHEDULE part of the page. Over there you’ll find a list of some conventions/readings/signings/etc that I’ll be doing this year.

Of particular note are my two appearances in St. Paul this weekend. I’ll be appearing at two separate libraries, one on Saturday, the other on Sunday. It’s free for anyone to attend. I’ll sign books if you bring them, and there will be books there to buy…

More events will be posted in the weeks to come. Seattle folk – I’ll be out near y’all over Easter weekend. I’ll be posting those details soon.

Okay. On to business.

Response to the Italian cover was every bit as varied as I expected. But there was rather more of it than I’d thought there would be. Since there were a lot of good comments and questions, I decided that I’d do a follow-up post to clarify a few things.

Points of interest and/or clarification.

The art is done by a guy named Brom.

I didn’t know about him before someone made reference to the cover as Brom-art in the comments of the last blog, but I have seen his stuff before. Mostly on D&D books back in the day….

Side note: I am currently working on a theory that once you reach a certain degree of fame, you get bumped up to a new quantum energy state wherein you only need one name.

This is easier to achieve for artists (Donato, Brom) and musicians (Sting, Madonna).

It’s much rarer for authors. I suspect they need way more energy, like electrons in different valence shells. So for writers, only the SUPER elite have enough juice to make the jump (Cervantes, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Chaucer).

Brom’s website is OVER HERE if you’re interested.

The art wasn’t drawn for the book specifically. The Italian publisher bought the rights to a pre-existing piece of art to use as the cover for the book.

That means:

It’s not Kvothe or one of the Chandrian. Don’t sprain anything trying to make that fit in your head. (Though I would like to see Brom’s take on the Chandrian.)

You didn’t miss the part of the book where someone has an eye in his hand. Neither is the eye-hand a mistranslation issue or some strange cultural signifier.

My favorite comments on the cover:

Kip: “It’s obviously a picture of Kvothe LARPing his favorite Vampire: The Requiem Character.”

“They must have wanted to picture someone with good eye-hand coordination.”

“NOTW? WTF?”

Sarah: “Kvothe has some sort of pointy pain stick. He should be careful or it will poke him in the hand-eye.”

A few responses to questions and comments:

“Oh man Pat. As a graphic designer can I just say that that is a bad choice. There is no connection to the book that I can come up with at all. The thing on his hand is so prominent that people are going to wonder why its not in the book. It will be confusing. Then the really bad drop shadow, or black glow around the text is just bad design. The whole composition just was not meant to have text covering it.”

I think you’re right about the composition of the piece. It obviously wasn’t meant to be obscured. I got the permission to show the original artwork from Brom: So here it is…

I’m pretty sure that they used that black shadow and my name to cover up Gothy McHotBod’s nipple ring.

And yes, for those of you who are wondering, my chest looks exactly like that when I take my shirt off. By which I mean that I am pale as a bleached ghost on a moonlit night.

Christian asked: “Pat, I am very curious as to who that person is on the cover of the Italian version of your book. I’m pretty sure you would have a big say into what visually depicts your book to first time ( and in my case, long-time) readers.”

Typically, authors get little-to-no say as to the covers of their books. Part of this is because the cover is, ultimately, a marketing choice, rather than an artistic one. And truthfully, publishers know more about marketing than authors do. Also, authors are word-smart, not necessarily picture smart.

That said, in my opinion it is a shame that authors aren’t included in that process more frequently.

I did get to participate in the discussion about my US covers. But that is the exception to the rule, as my publisher, DAW, is very considerate. And my editor, Betsy, respects my opinion on these things. Still, they didn’t say, “what do you think we should do.” they said, “Here’s what we’re planning, what do you think?”

Still, it’s nice to be asked.

My French publisher asked for my thoughts in the planning stage, and my Japanese editor asked early on if I had any suggestions as to who I would like as an artist. But none of the other foreign editors have included me so far. The first time I saw the Italian cover was about a week ago…

In a few of my more recent foreign contracts, I have approval of the final covers. But that doesn’t mean that I get to design them. If the books continue to sell well, I’ll probably get even more say in the future. I’m guessing.

“Why do they keep changing the cover? What’s wrong with original Shirtless Kvothe and Green man?”

Those covers belong to the US publisher. The foreign publishers would have to buy the rights to them if they wanted to use them. They probably don’t want to do that because they’re marketing the book to an entirely different culture.

That’s all for now, folks. I’m back to work on book two…

pat

Also posted in appearances, Things I didn't know about publishing

|posted by Pat 26 Comments

Published: March 1, 2008

Name of the Wind – Italian style.

So today is the day that the Italian version of The Name of the Wind hits the shelves. While we’ve sold the foreign translation rights in a lot of countries so far, this is only the second version to actually make it into print, so I’m still experiencing some of that giddy, newbie author joy over the whole things.

I don’t know if it’s significant that the book is coming out on leap day. Except I think it means this book will age more slowly than the other versions of my book, only getting one year older for every seven normal years.

Wait. Seven? No. Four. I was thinking of dog years….

…

Man. Now I’m wondering what would happen if a dog is born on leap day.

Okay. I can figure this out. I used to be good a story problems, and that was before I studied symbolic logic. Let’s see…

Given – one dog year is equal to seven human years.
Given – those born on leap day only age one year for every four calendar years.

If a dog was born on a leap day, after twenty-one calendar years, he would be:

A) 504 years old.
B) 36 years old
C) 42 years old.
D) Still bound by his duty.
E) Other

Anyway, back to the Italian translation. I haven’t actually seen the book yet. Not in a real-world sense. I got the editor to send me a nice picture of the cover, but it’s really not the same as holding a real book in your hands. It’s roughly the same difference as seeing baby pictures and holding a baby.

Anyway, here’s the cover. I think you’ll all agree that it’s a whole lot different than the US, UK, and Dutch covers that we’ve seen so far…

(As always, you can click the picture to embiggen it.)

I’m curious what y’all think of this cover, so feel free to drop a comment into the discussion below….

That’s all I’ve got for now. More news is on the horizon, so stay tuned.

pat

Also posted in foreign happenings

|posted by Pat 67 Comments

Published: February 22, 2008

Concerning Printings and a New Cover

Over the last year or so, I’ve learned a lot about the publishing industry.

I’ve always been a big reader, but I never spent much time wondering where books came from, or how they were made. Even when I started working on my books, I focused on the craft of writing, and not the particulars of getting published.

Because of this, I have weird gaps in my knowledge. For example, I just recently learned how to identify different printings of books.

What’s a printing? Well, when your book first comes out, your publisher takes a look at how many books the booksellers and distributors have ordered. Then the publisher prints enough books to cover those orders, plus some extra to have in the warehouse so that they can fill additional orders. That first printing is, well, the first printing.

These first printings can be of wildly different sizes. The first printing of the last Harry Potter book was huge, of course. While a lot of books by new authors get a very small first printings because the publishers don’t know how well the book is going to sell.

From what I understand, a lot of books only get one printing.

But occasionally, something magical happens. Sometimes people keep buying a book from the stores, so those stores keep having to order more from the distributors. The distributors have to order more from the publisher, and then the publisher prints a new batch of the book: that’s the second printing.

And so on, and so on…

I learned all of that fairly early on, but what I *didn’t* know was how to tell the which printing was which. But now I do…

You know that page early on in the book with all that legal-y information on it?

Here’s the one from my book. As always, guest starring my thumb…

Down here is the important bit.

Here’s the tricky part. The line that says “First Hardcover Printing” doesn’t actually tell you anything about the printing. It’s the numbers underneath. Here all the numbers 1-10 are printed out. That means that this is a first printing.

Here’s the second printing of my book. You can tell because the little number one is missing from the list. (Click the picture to embiggen.)

The fourth printing….

And lastly, the fifth printing:

The fifth printing is actually easier to spot than the other ones, as it has one additional subtle difference:

That’s right. The fifth printing of the hardcover got an awesome new cover. I was really flattered that the publisher would do this. I really like the way it looks.

This means that Shirtless Kvothe and Angry Stone Man are a thing of the past. So hang on to them, folks. In five or ten years you’ll be able to e-bay them and put your kids through college.

Also note that this cover makes it very clear that I am a winner, and that The Name of the Wind is a novel. If you were confused about either of those things, you can rest easier now.

Later,

pat

Also posted in Things I didn't know about publishing

|posted by Pat 47 Comments

Published: September 6, 2007

My Awfulness…

In the last set of comments, Mr. Puddifoot called me out. He said that the book I displayed was actually a promotional cover slapped over the top of a plain-old copy of The Name of the Wind.

He was right. The photo was nothing but base trickery on my part, a deception born of my dark, tarlike heart. All I can do is ask for your forgiveness.

Believe me, if book two were that close to being done, you’d be seeing it on the shelves a lot sooner than July of 2008.

As a penance for my horrible tricksyness. I offer up the following:

First, a picture of the UK versions of the book. I just got these in the mail a day or two ago. I think they look pretty cool. Apparently over there, they release the hardcover and the trade paperback at the same time. Go figure.

(You can click the picture to make it bigger, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

Can you see the subtle difference in the two covers? I didn’t notice it while I was taking the pictures, only when I was posting them up here afterwards….

You know that the UK hardcover sells for 19 pounds? That’s almost 40 bucks. I guess I won’t cringe so much at the thought of paying 25 for a hardcover here in the states after this….

Also, I’ve got a new multi-lingual set of interviews for a website called Phantastik-Couch. Bringing my four years of high-school German to bear, I can tell you that this translates as “Fantastic Couch,” or quite possibly, “Fantasy Couch.”

They were nice enough to post the interview up both in ENGLISH and GERMAN, depending on which way you swing.

Back to revisions for me, and sorry about toying with your emotions yesterday. I promise it won’t happen again unless… Well, unless I think of something really funny.

Fondly,

pat

Also posted in foreign happenings, Interviews

|posted by Pat Leave a comment

Published: August 23, 2007