{"id":16293,"date":"2014-09-17T06:47:34","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T14:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/?p=16293"},"modified":"2015-02-23T09:28:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T17:28:32","slug":"cover-art-spiders-war-daniel-abraham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/art\/cover-art\/cover-art-spiders-war-daniel-abraham\/","title":{"rendered":"Cover Art for The Spider’s War<\/em> by Daniel Abraham"},"content":{"rendered":"\"the-spiders-war-by-daniel-abraham\"\n

I’ve got one response for this:<\/p>\n\"272\"\n

(Okay, I actually have more than one response, natch, so bear with me. Orbit Books is one of the few big SFF publishers that understands the value in building a brand for its authors. When they weren’t happy with Brent Weeks’ cover for The Black Prism<\/em>, they recovered the whole series and created an eye-catching and instantly recognizable series on bookstore shelves. They’ve done so with James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse<\/em>, and Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch<\/em> series. The packaging and branding for Daniel Abraham’s The Dagger and the Coin<\/em> was never their finest work, but it was bold and the emblematic weapon (sword, axe, torch, shield and spear) were consistent and matched scale.<\/p>\n

And, now, suddenly, here’s a generic fantasy landscape with a lifeless dragon and a repeating cloud pattern, with the same handful of buildings cut and paste beneath them.<\/p>\n\"the-spiders-war-by-daniel-abraham-buildings\"\n

Not only that, they’ve doubly burned the branding on the series by using the tower’s peak as the “i” in the title, something that’s unprecedented in the previous covers.<\/p>\n

Come on, Orbit. You can (and have<\/em>) done better.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the fifth book in an ongoing series that needs a kick in the sales pants, it’s the final volume of an attractive series from an author with a lot of diehard fans. Rebranding a series can be a powerful tool for introducing a series to a new set of readers, or giving sales a kick in the pants. However, the cover of the fifth and final volume in a series certainly isn’t going to sell more copies of the preceding four volumes, and, if they’re trying to bump themselves up a few notches on the scale of epic awesomeness, presumably to match the climax of the trilogy, they’ve stumbled over the finish line in a race they led the whole way through.<\/p>\n

Disappointed doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve got one response for this: (Okay, I actually have more than one response, natch, so bear with me. Orbit Books is one of the few big SFF publishers that understands the value in building a brand for its authors. When they weren’t happy with Brent Weeks’ cover for The Black Prism, they recovered the… The Spider’s War<\/em> by Daniel Abraham”>Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[31,26],"tags":[1285,1283,122,38,107,123,995],"class_list":["post-16293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-cover-art","tag-art","tag-cover-art","tag-daniel-abraham","tag-fantasy","tag-orbit-books","tag-the-dagger-and-the-coin","tag-the-spiders-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n