Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Well spotted!
The Pink One definitely has more punch and stands out. The cover with the ivory version suffers because the red lettering draws attention away from the people, whereas in the Pink version, by changing the colour of the dress, the designer has been able to use white lettering and get a more balanced cover. That said, I think blue would probably have been a better choice.

Both of them look like a bad 20th Century version of Regency attire. The couple is too tan in the Ivory cover for period, but that lavender pink is too modern. Try again on both counts because neither one gets a digit up from me.

I do so hate covers of historical books where the heroine appears to have breast implants!

Another Prom Dress book. This has about as much connection with a Regency dress as - well, the peach bridesmaid’s dress stuffed under my bed, hopefully never to be seen again.
The second colour is so not period, it doesn’t help.
And breast implants of the beach ball variety?
Oh yes, and mens’ shirts didn’t unbutton all the way down until much later in the 19th century.
Wonder how long they had to pose for this one, and did she get a neckache?
The trouble with covers like this, is if you were looking for a historical, you might well jump past this, thinking it’s a contemporary.

....if you were looking for a historical, you might well jump past this, thinking it’s a contemporary.

Well, I would have done, for one.  I assumed it was contemporary, and was enlightened only by the comments above.  An additional fault, if the scene is supposed to be 19thC, is the woman’s long, loose hair, which looks as though she has merely run her fingers through it.

Would Hyacinth Bucket approve?

That’s Boo-kay.  Maybe—she seems to like pastels.

lavender pink is too modern

Indeed it is. Mauve was not available widely until the aniline dye was discovered in 1856 and called by that name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauve

Whereupon there was a marked craze for this hitherto rare and difficult colour.

It’s still rather pretty and makes a nice, if very anachronistic cover.

she seems to like pastels.

But *not* the pert and heaving bosom, I suspect. That’s far too much like Rose for comfort :) Onslow would be all over it…them though!

I Like the Courtney Milan cover better, but I like the work that bucket does to a cover.

I prefer the ivory to the ghastly “I bought this off the DEB clearance rack!” purply pink thing.

But looking at it again, I also realize that the second image is zoomed in and cropped closer - so we getter a better look at the dude - and he looks rather scraggly…with major morning scruff and eyes that are all squinty, so I get this feeling that he just got out of bed and has nasty morning breath and there he is hovering with his mouth wide open above her nose. But then again, in romance land, no one ever seems to need to dash to the bathroom to brush their teeth before a morning quickie, so I suppose it’s not a problem for her.

I’m sorry, I’m distracted by the fact that the guy is super hot and has GRAY hair.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen legit gray hair on a cover model.

I also notice they punched up his 5:00 shadow in the Pink Version.

The pink is definitely better than the white, but I think blue would have been less onoxious.  Or maybe an emerald green?  The cropping does look better also.

Okay, maybe this is a stupid question: are these two different books that utilize the same cover art, or is it an author using a pen name and a rework of the title?  Just curious.

The pink makes me think of those graphics where everything’s in black and white except for one bright splash of color—does NOT belong. If they’d picked a stronger color in the same color palette I wouldn’t wince so much….

I like the purple cover better, but I liked the book itself and I eat historical inaccuracies for breakfast.

Still not sure why people think the Mama Bird/Baby Bird position is sexy - are neck cricks stimulating somehow?

My mouse roller is getting a workout this morning, reading the comments and scrolling back up to look at the pictures.
You girls are just too good with your historical knowledge of dresses and buttons and hair and colors! Bravo. Since I don’t read them they just look like two pretty covers to me. I like both.
Howevah….on the “white” cover I do have a problem with the guy’s nipple. It looks a little bit like an eye to me.

Wow. Rough crowd.

I like the ivory one.
I could tell it was historical and not contemporary.
I like the way the guy looks.
I don’t think she has implants.
The purple dress up close looks nice because you can see the detail better.
I don’t pick a book for just the cover.

Both covers have problems to me, but, on purely visual appeal, I prefer the ivory one because of the color scheme. Her skirt is really bugging the crap out of me though, so the pink/purple/uck colored has the whole cropping out the skirt thing going for it.

BUT WHAT"S GOING ON WITH HER LEFT THUMB?! o_O

I’m reminded of nothing so much as when I browse Victoria’s Secret, and you can change the clothing color to something not entirely unlike that found in nature with a swift click of the mouse.
Click! Ah, the base white….
Click! Oh, cerulean blue, with shadows of navy that don’t seem QUITE right…the shirt that flew in from Outer Space!
Click! Ah, pink. Pepto Bismal shadows, Strawberry smoothie jelly bean highlights. Let me get a spoon…
IT"S NOT RIGHT I TELL YOU.

Yes, the white is better.

::reading the comments:: Wait, these are Regencies? The cover didn’t even say “historical” to me. So, on both counts, this cover fails.

As far as aesthetics go, the first cover is prettier, in my opinion, but the second cover pops more. The first cover said to me “the romance in this book begins with a wedding of some kind.” The second color would have appealed to me more if the color hadn’t been pink. Blue, green, or even yellow would be have been better. That said, the color is so flat (not sure if this is the right word) that it just looks fake and…bucket-y. Maybe it would work better if the decorations on the dress were a different color than the rest of the dress, even if they were only a different shade?

@ Jeannie - OMG, you are right. The nipple totally looks like an eye on the ivory cover.

and here I was thinking that was lilac. ...kept wondering what yall were calling pink! Pink to me is “baby pink”.

My vote goes for the lilac (*g*). It stands out more. both are clear historical to me with her dress, the furniture and wallpaper (I read both authors, so that could be swaying me?)

I wouldn’t have thought contemporary, not with the puffy, lacy shirt!  But on the second, the puffiness is cropped off.

I agree with StarOpal: in the second cover her left thumb makes it look as if she’s gripping her skirt for dear life.  In the first, it just looks lost in the folds of her skirt.

Now I feel like I’m playing “Seven Differences.”

I like the 2nd cover (pink) better, but it’s all about the guy for me.  Also, I like the cropping better on the 2nd.

I don’t know or care that much about historical accuracy, so the dress didn’t bother me at all.

Criticizing romance covers for historical inaccuracy is like shooting fish in a barrel. However, if it’s the sport of the day I’d like to point out that neither book is set in the Regency, also known as Ye Olde Era of High-Waisted Gowns.

I think both covers are very pretty.

I swear my grandmother has a jogging suit in that exact shade O.O So, uh, yeah. Definitely can’t look at that one without giggling and plus, objectively, to me, the color is all wrong. I agree, a blue would have been much better.

I didn’t see contemporary with either of them, but they do both have that modern-folks-dressed-up-for-mardi-gras feel that bugs me. Although the ivory one less so, for some reason.

Bah! Bucket is evil. Much better to use multiple overlay and lighting adjust layers. That takes longer though ... and what was the question again? (too early, haven’t finished giant cup-o-caffiny goodness yet)

I like the closer in crop job, but what an icky blech inducing color. Why is there this assumption that females and pink are the only combination available? Or that we all like icky pinks just beause we’ve got boobs?

The only time pink is acceptable is when it involves some super hero logo (dark pink + Batman = awsomesauce), or Strawberry Shortcake, and I’m in the mood to relive my childhood through crazy clothing.

Other than that, my neck is starting to hurt just looking at that poor girl.

Score—blue26 - there were 26 shades of blue that would have looked better than blechy pink!

@TraciP—two different books, by different authors.  Publishers used the same stock photo as the basis for the cover.
I’m with Keri Ford—sure looks like lilac to me-not pink.

Here’s another vote for the cropped, lilac dress cover, as the snappier cover.  The white dress cover, however, gets the ‘historical’ aspect across.

And StarOpal has good eyes!!—I will be charitable and think that her left thumb is merely folded in and hidden by the fabric.  Otherwise, this poor lady has a deformed hand.  You don’t notice it as much in the white cover, because the author’s name goes across her left hand.

@Daisy ” in the second cover her left thumb makes it look as if she’s gripping her skirt for dear life”

Actually, she tried to ward off Bucket, so Bucket amputated her thumb to teach her a lesson. No one says no to Bucket!

Wel then, it’s a very much on the pink end of the color pallate lilac—cause it looks more pink on my screen. =P

And I think I know what’s wrong with her hand - the skirt looks to have been digitally enhanced/painted over but not matching whatever was going on in the original shoot and her hand was forgotten about. Easier to see in the pinky-lilacy version with how much they went after things with the blur tool.

Now, if they’d just brought a fold of fabric over her hand, it would have worked just fine.

@TraciP—two different books, by different authors.  Publishers used the same stock photo as the basis for the cover.

Thank you for clearing that up.  Seems kind of like cheating to me.

LOL, are there so few pictures in the world that they have keep reusing! I always am amazed at this.

Anyway, I like the top one much better.  The red and cream are so much nice than the cream with that awful pepto pink. It is like a bad bridesmaids dress!

I swear my grandmother has a jogging suit in that exact shade O.O So, uh, yeah.

HA!

I love that color purpinkgenta—brings out my eyes. I mean in a good way.

Got to admit I find the guy very sexy, and I usually think romance covers look like gay porn. I just don’t find hairless action figures very appealing. The 5am shadow this guy’‘s got going on gets it going for me. I’m afraid I still have a thing for David Duchovny (yeah, I know) and he kind of looks like him.

Baby bird feeding pose does freak me out, but I’ve got a bad neck, so I’m kind of sensitive.

However, if it’s the sport of the day I’d like to point out that neither book is set in the Regency,

Miranda, just for interest, what periods are the two books set in?  A quick look for one of them on Amazon and elsewhere didn’t enlighten me.  I find it really strange that publishers’ blurbs and readers’ reviews often don’t even mention the era in which the story takes place!

For years, American editions of Regency-period historicals tended to have cover images featuring women wearing roughly 1860s costume;  now it seems that even in the UK, we just put them in modern dress.

The wallpaper is completely modern, and furniture lasts generations, so although it can’t be later than the period indicated, it can be a whole lot earlier.  That chaise longue, or whatever it is, may be Regency-influenced, but no more.  Plenty of modern reproductions are made in that style.

I took the bloke’s ‘shirt’ to be a dressing-gown.  :-)  Since the woman’s hair is not ‘done’, but just hanging loose, maybe her garment is actually a rather fancy nightgown… 

I would describe the woman’s (modern) dress as pink, rather than lilac, lavender or mauve, though it is certainly a cool,  bluish shade of pink rather than a yellowish one.  But people see colours differently (and computer screens reproduce them differently), and furthermore, the terminology is very imprecise, so one can’t expect agreement.

PICTURES of the peach dress, please. Preferably of you in it?!

Oh wow. I think there might be one, but it’s a picture, not a scan. I was maid of honor, and as such, I had a hoop. Gets worse. A bridesmaid’s dress in vivid orangey-peach with a hoop underneath and puffy sleeves. Made of that nylon that sticks to your skin. It cost the poor bride a fortune, too from Pronuptia. I could have done better with 20 quid and a vintage fashion shop.
I should hire it out to cover designers.

I do know it’s really difficult to get accurately dressed cover art for at least Georgians. We had a lot of difficulty getting one for the upcoming Richard and Rose, and in the end we went with closeups. No clothes involved.

Got to admit I find the guy very sexy, and I usually think romance covers look like gay porn.

Wait, gay porn isn’t supposed to be sexy?

The colour seems more pink than purple to me.

What is he KNEELING on in the first one? It looks like the wall?

Bucket is busy!

Um WOW! What Heather said.
And her thumb is curved over the edge of the chair, there’s no nipple, it’s a shadow & he’s not kneeling, he’s propped one knee against the chair back for support as he leans over. Geesh!
And he just came in late from doing guy stuff like riding & fencing & gettin’ a little sugar from the lady he’s kept waiting before heading for a bath. All in all a nice little moment.
And the ivory cover please.

HA! spamword moment78 - and I wasn’t even trying!

I’m to the point where I love what they do with the covers.  Nothing more pleasing to my eye than a well designed cover, but nothing better for the funny bone than something like this.  You could write a new book in some series based on the weirdness of the cover continuity or the lack thereof.  My current pet theory revolves around a couple of doppelgangers sneaking about in Julie Anne Long’s Pennyroyal Green series.  The covers of The Perils of Pleasure and Since the Surrender look to feature the same woman, you might have to squint to see it, but looks like the same woman to me.  The covers of Since the Surrender (again) and What I Did for a Duke seem to feature the same man; if not the same man, then the same hair, squint again if it is required (you know you want the wrinkles).  Crazy stuff going on over at Pennyroyal Green.

The Marvelle cover wins this contest; but, for me, a Milan book wins on content every time.  The Bucket and the Crop are naughty tools in the wrong hands.  And that redbud pink dress—do we really think Jenny Keeble would be caught dead in that, even if she had dyed her hair blond first?

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.

I’m sorry, I’m distracted by the fact that the guy is super hot and has GRAY hair.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen legit gray hair on a cover model.

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.

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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?