It’s time for yet another Adventure Of Bucket! Not Hyacinth Bucket, nor the Lolrus Bucket. This bucket.
This bucket has a lot of work to do. Here’s an example. Look! It’s a book cover, brought to my attention by sharp-eyed reader DL!
Quite a lovely photograph, really. It’s not bad. But NOT FOR BUCKET. Bucket Must Make Change!
So how’s about this hot pink UK one? Bucket had some help from his main man, Crop.
So, which do you like better? You wish Bucket had chosen a different color, one less of My Mother In Law’s Eyeshadow? Would Hyacinth Bucket approve?
I much prefer the first cover, distracting-man-titty issue aside. I think the muted color with the red type and the brighter gold in the furniture is more artistically pleasing than the Pepto-Bismol gown in the second. Plus, more importantly, the first cover seems to me to tell more of a story: the gown looks like a wedding dress but the title and the hero’s dishabille seem to indicate something else. The second cover to me is puzzling (why is a fully dressed woman kissing a guy who looks like he’s just come from a Mr Darcy-like swim?) but not as intriguing.
uh…wow. I am sufficiently terrified. First, I always like original and minimal photoshop. The color that is too fake for it’s own good is bad. I love the moment, that is what attracts me to an image as a photographer, less the nitpicky stuff, (but it is so incredibly important! So don’t get me wrong)
My cover has a distinctly unvictorian piece of clothing. I left it out of the illustrations in the novel because I thought it would be distracting inside but love the moment. Now I am rethinking the cover. (again) because y’all are killing me with the specificity. LOL
want48 I don’t want 48 more reasons to redesign my novel.
Word, yo. I normally hate male romance cover models, but that man is… acceptable. Okay, smoking hot and totally my type. Like, good-lord-get-me-a-cold-shower my type.
Oh, and for statistical purposes, I prefer the cream-colored gown; the purply-pink one looks too much like the bridesmaid dress I have to wear this summer.
Now I’m going to go stare at Mr. Cover Model some more. I’m seriously tempted to buy both books just so I can stare at him. My concentration is gone for the day.
Courtney Milan writes in the early Victorian period (usually in the late 1830s) and Delilah Marvelle writes in the Romantic period just preceding that -(late 1820’s to early 1830s).
I would have preferred a muted gold dress so it didn’t look so damn virginal but the hot pink is traumatic. Sorry.
Hmm. I was so distracted by the pink (purple, to some of you), that I didn’t even notice the weird scary blob with a chopped off thumb that is her hand.
She’s got a very deformed hand in the pink cover… YOW!
Lisa
okay so I was confused when I saw the Proof by Seduction cover. Why? Because I was recently looking at Courtney Milan Covers and books. here is the cover I remember:
http://www.courtneymilan.com/proofbyseduction.php
Yikes! okay so If it was between the two PbS covers: I would def. pick the one on this site.
But I don’t really like the puce dress. I think that’s what they were going for: puce anyone?
That being said I don’t like that the photo was used twice. Even though its not a big deal. I own two sets of books that feature the same picture/painting on the cover. (By different authors for different books. Actually one set is two books written by the same author by different publishers, both of the books in this same set are reprints of Heyer.)
That being said its seems lazier to re use a photo than painting or faux painting.
If I had to pick one, I would pick the white. But she seems bigger than him in both photos. Actually that dress is bigger than both of them. Honestly neither cover seems that appealing even if I do like a five clock shadow and what not.
This is not the only foreign edition of mine that has borrowed a cover from elsewhere.
Thus, TRIAL BY DESIRE (M&B Australia): http://www.courtneymilan.com/australia/
Compared with Nicola Cornick’s MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT: http://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Midnight-Hqn-Nicola-Cornick/dp/0373774885/
And EINE HINREISSENDE SCHWINDLERIN (Cora’s German edition): http://www.courtneymilan.com/deutschland/
Compared with Christine Merrill’s MISS WINTHORPE’S ELOPEMENT: http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Winthorpes-Elopement-Harlequin-Historical/dp/0373295847/
I assume that all my foreign edition covers once belonged to someone else, and this is part of the Great Circle of Life and/or Cost Containment.
Stealing covers from other works for foreign editions is actually par for the course. When I first saw the M&B cover, I sent Delilah a note saying “Thanks for letting me use your cover!” It’s a beautiful cover. (And yes, not period accurate—but I can count the number of truly period accurate covers I’ve seen recently on one finger). You could play this game endlessly by going to any foreign arm of Harlequin, looking at the covers, and then matching them with the original.
My favorite example of all time remains this, though:
WENCH, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez: http://www.amazon.com/Wench-Novel-Dolen-Perkins-Valdez/dp/006170654X
The UK version of Lisa Kleypas’s TEMPT ME AT TWILIGHT: http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780749909581
It’s a different shot, surely. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out if they photoshopped the skin color from the same photo session or just recycled the dress and the pose.
I suppose she’s clutching at her gown in anticipation of the ecstasy to come. Why, I don’t know, because that seems an awfully uncomfortable and awkward way to approach a night of ecstasy.
I prefer the second cover, only because I dislike all that ivory and then the fish-belly white lettering of “scandal” across the ivory sweep of her gown. Not crazy about theauthor’s name in red, either.
I’d’ve picked a different color for the gown, but it’s not horrible and, IMO, the overall cover palette is an improvement on the first picture.
Our hero, however, seems to have had something go terribly wrong with his man-boob, which might explain why he doesn’t want to stand in front of her all exposed like that. Still, he could just remain buttoned up, or laced up, until it was time to snuff the candles.
This is why I prefer drawings or paintings over photos, though. Actually, my favorite covers lately are Julia Quinn’s UK covers, but they compliment her light, witty style. Probably not appropriate for a more melodramatic or erotic story.
@Courtney Milan
The central figure is wearing two different pairs of lace gloves; would they change gloves during one photo-shoot while leaving the dress so much the same? It is definitely the same dress.
My comment above is about the “Wench” and “Tempt Me at Twilight” covers, not the covers in the original post.
Okay, yeah, call me anal. But this is not the bucket. This is the hue/saturation tool with perhaps some color overlay. Or at least that’s how I’d do it and it would be super easy 🙂 Either way I prefer the not-pink.
@Courtney Milan Those covers are eerie and I am now suffering Gunne Sax deja vu.
hotel77: That dress probably landed on at least one hotel room floor in 1977. Good grief, even the CAPTCHA is eerie.
I personally can’t stop looking at the guy’s face. He looks likes he’s going to eat her. Who kisses like that??
And while I like Milan’s cover better, I don’t like the pink color of the dress. Doesn’t seem to fit the time period at all.
I usually dislike fiction covers that purport to illustrate characters or an incident in the book; I associate that approach with children’s books, and consequently, I dislike the majority of romance covers on principle (in fact, it was the ‘people-covers’ above all that used to prevent me from buying/reading romance when I was younger and more sensitive. I found them acutely embarrassing). I much prefer abstract or symbolic designs, attempts to convey concept or atmosphere, rather than a set-piece from the story.
However, if the cover does show people doing this or that, they had better, at the very least, be accurate in terms of the story. If the heroine is a short, slim brunette and the story is set in England in 1817, I do not wish to see a tall, bosomy blonde in 1860s costume with obviously American landscape and architecture behind her. What’s the point? It’s an illustration, but not an illustration to the story inside. A ‘literal’ image is acceptable only as long as it IS literal, and accurately reproduces some element from the book.
I have an old edition of Heyer’s Venetia (my favourite Heyer, and that’s saying a lot), which always infuriates me because it has a painting on the front which is correct in terms of costume, but features a half-timbered brick country house appropriate for southern England, specifically Sussex: the story is set in Yorkshire and London. Totally different architecture.
Either the cover should give one a general abstract ‘feel’ for the book — romantic, scary, whatever — or if the people-cover approach is used, then it should be right. I know that even those who are a lot less fussy than I am about details like costume and landscape can be thrown by the illustrated hero/heroine not matching the description inside the book. It seems to me that using a stock photo, however much it has been tweaked, is the worst of all possible worlds. It fails to satisfy either those who want to see an illustration to the story, or those who prefer something more subtle and symbolic.
I know (only too well) that authors often have little or no control over these matters, but I do think that publishers should realise that there are many readers who dislike inappropriate cover designs.
I think if you are going to Photoshop something, you should do it well. All I can see is that the settee between her arm and knee was painted also. So while the piping on the couch is ivory, suddenly the rest of the back has chameleoned into her skirts. :/
i definitely liked the first one better. the pink-ish one looks a little garish and hurts my eyes.
I think they both look beautiful.
I prefer the uncropped version because the guy has such a pretty hand. I like the color scheme in it better, too, except for “Scandal” being white.
I like the first one better because my eyes are drawn to the kiss. On the second cover, I just can’t stop staring at the dress.
That pink shade is nasty, IMO. However the parchment dress is in danger of fading into the wallpaper. May I suggest eggshell blue?