Lois McMaster Bujold: On covers and translations (sort of forwarded from LMB mailing list) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2971: > << Alright, if nobody else is going to say it, I will. ACC sports just about > the worst cover which has ever been inflicted upon Her Ladyship. >> > > I hate to say it, but on the Baen site, Lois was very complimentary of the > cover. And I, for one, was charmed by it. It was not totally accurate, but > I found it to compliment the story. YMMV. > > Jeff Parker Well... what I said was, it made me *laugh*. Not quite the same thing... The ACC cover could have been much worse, the Internet promotion certainly made up for some of its reader-repelling qualities, and most importantly, it repelled a *different* slice of the readership than prior covers, with luck widening my nets. Once I've got 'em past the covers, it doesn't matter what's on the outside of the book, as long as it has my name spelled right. > From: Lois Aleta Fundis > Subject: Re: ACC cover > At 01:00 AM 12/10/99 GMT, John Dierdorf wrote: > >At our get-together last Saturday, Lois mentioned that there's a new > >edition of Shards of Honor coming out, with a cover she likes. If nothing > >else, she says it will give us our first cover art of Aral - in uniform > >yet. > > So what's wrong with the picture of Aral on the *original* cover? I >for one like it. (Keep it on my bedside table.) He looks like Clint Eastwood, instead of like Oliver Reed. *That's* been fixed... heh. However, feel free to continue to imagine him however he best pleases *you*. That's one of the hidden strengths of written fiction, after all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 769: Hi, all -- I promised to give you some back-story on my covers.... So anyway, my first book sale THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE had got in over the transom at Baen in 1985 and been accepted, along with SHARDS and ETHAN. For reasons unknown to me Baen had in stock a piece of unused cover art by Alan Gutierrez originally intended, I was later told, for a Keith Laumer novel, which had not been used. This was "recycled" onto WA by sending it back to the artist to paint the Miles-figure in the command chair. Jim Baen was at the time quite uncertain if a short hero was going to sell, so was happy that Miles's height would be ambiguous that way... My (female) editor assured me that the Elena-figure was also going to be better clothed, but for some reason that never happened. The deed was done, and the Miles-figure was returned from the artist -- dressed, alas, in that "space nazi" black leather uniform which proved such a plague upon my books in the perceptions of people who hadn't actually read them thereafter. Sigh, grit. I was, however, assured that since this was a "wrap" cover (where the art goes all the way around onto the back), ordinarily more expensive, it would signal book middlemen (who don't actually read the product they handle) it was a "more important" book. Well, all right. Because it was important to give the books a recognizable look, Baen went with Gutierrez for the other covers as well. I'm still not sure if SHARDS and ETHAN were stock art or commissioned for the books. The FALLING FREE cover of course was, as was the one for BROTHERS IN ARMS -- made to look like WA 'cause WA had turned in an excellent 70% sell-through, well above average for a paperback, and Baen hoped to make that happen again, please. For reasons unknown to me BORDERS OF INFINITY then got that striking cover by Gary Ruddell, and went on to be my top-seller to date, quite unexpected since it was a collection and collections aren't supposed to sell as well as novels. Baen, trying to be responsive to all the whining about my covers (and not just from me) then embarked on a period of cover-art experimentation. Letting the author in on the cover process isn't the cure-all, because I actually got to see the cover sketches by Tom Kidd for THE VOR GAME. I really didn't quite like any of 'em, but I didn't have any better ideas, so Baen chose the most dramatic-looking one. I had to content myself with the reflection that at least the Miles-figure wasn't dressed in black leather this time. Let's just say that Tom Kidd has done much better work. About this time Stephen Hickman did that dynamite cover for McCaffrey and Moon's SASSINAK, which I admired loudly at the Boston Worldcon. So Baen got me Hickman, who did the cover for BARRAYAR. Whatever magic Moon got out of him was a frustrating near-miss on mine, alas. I then ventured into cover design by asking for the cover of THE SPIRIT RING to be just a close-up of the ring, on red or black background, and Hickman did the job you have seen. Via a long 'nother story, I was finally breaking into hardcover with THE SPIRIT RING, and Baen did another experiment with the dust jacket, choosing what looked in the office like a striking velvetly-black finish. Unfortunately, it proved to be quite fragile and rubbed off showing white underneath, so brand new hardcover books came out of their shipping boxes looking battered and used, which didn't help *those* sales any; THE SPIRIT RING had a poor sell-through in hardcover, setting me up for problems later. *I* thought the cover looked classy, but it sure didn't sell the book. Michael Whalen gets more for a piece of cover art than I got as an *advance* for any of my first seven novels, so I figured it would be useless to ask for him. So, OK, I said, let's try something that did work to sell the book, let's try Gary Ruddell again. At least he usually had a slightly more sophisticated, adult-looking style than one or two of the other guys. Thanks to the science fiction convention Boskone, which brought us both out as guests, I have actually had a chance to meet and talk with Gary face-to-face. Baen gave Gary my phone number, and we have had several pre-art talks about cover designs. I *never* have had a good idea to offer when he calls, particularly for the new cover for THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE. I mumbled around about it being a very important book to the series, but didn't quite muster the nerve to say, "Gary, I want you to paint something as good as Michael Whalen". What we got has some roots in a garbled description I gave him of my Japanese WA cover. Yeah, I can see what I said -- it just wasn't what I meant... Gary is blond, by the way -- I keep wondering if that has anything to do with Miles's sudden change of hair color. He does read the books, and says he likes them. I liked the MIRROR DANCE cover thematically, but of course three thousand people have come up to me and said, "That looks like ENEMY MINE"... Yes. I know. Shut up. I did have a long phone talk with Gary prior to the CETAGANDA cover, too, to good effect I think, except if I'd known he was going to do the two facing profiles again I'd have told him not to. Other than that I think CETAGANDA's a pretty successful piece of art. Except now I finally put Miles *in* a black suit in the text, he got painted in his Dendarii grays, which he of course wasn't wearing in that book... There are certain traps inherent in trying to discuss visual images over the phone, and I've fallen into several of them. I do think both Gary and the Baen designer did a bang-up job on the MEMORY cover; I thought it was just spectacular. If only Baen had printed more books... Baen keeps bracketing the target on my hardcover print runs. SPIRIT RING had a generous one, and was an embarassing failure. MIRROR DANCE, following, had a tight one, and so they ran out of books in the warehouse -- sixteen days before the book was even officially *released*. Baen did a small second printing to close the gap. They now have some modest quantity in stock again from returns, so the book is still actually available in hardcover. CETAGANDA I don't have numbers on, but they had plenty of copies. MEMORY they under-printed again -- they ran out in January, and are now going on fumes, re-cycling returns as fast as they trickle in. No paperback till October, and so it's hard for people to find copies of my Hugo nominee to read before the voting... It's so frustrating. Let it be noted, if you want a copy of the hc MEMORY by now *you have to order it*. It will not be spontaneously appearing in bookstores any more. It's too old and there aren't any left. And people wonder why writers tend to be manic-depressive. Ta, Lois. PS -- Foreign covers are a whole 'nother story too. I try not to get emotionally involved at that distance, but some of them are extremely, um, bemusing. I will let people who've seen 'em on the hoof discuss them, if they want to. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 778: > I'm sure that every one of us will buy a LMB book no mater how stupid > is the cover. I > actually bought WA (Bulgarian edition) with a 6 feet tall Miles, and > title something like > "Dendarii HeadHunters". Editors knew that, and make covers for the > other people, > which prefer bimbo and man with BFG on the cover. Marketing, you know! > :-) > > Sincerely, Chris P. Ha! And to add injury to insult, that is the infamous Bulgarian pirated edition. It was published without benefit of contract or any payment to the Author. (These were the same publishers who, while pirating one book, were simultaneously making an offer on another! Go figure.) The only two books I have out in Bulgarian for which I have actually been contracted and paid are BARD's editions of THE VOR GAME and MIRROR DANCE. BARD contracted for several more, but no further payments ever came through, so I've been assuming they died in the market and that contract is now void. If you have any further information about the state of my books in Bulgaria, please post it, and I will pass it on to my agent. Ta, Lois. PS -- The trouble is, people will only buy Bujold books with stupid covers *if they've already read some*. For you guys, Baen could wrap the books in brown paper and they'd sell just the same. My principal concern is the use of cover art to attract (or, alas, repel) new readers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2229: > In DIgest 2227 Greg Slade > wrote: > GS> So, the thought occurs to me that, for the hardcovers, at > GS> least, Baen could ship many of Her Ladyship's titles with two or > GS> more covers ... Thus doubling the cost of putting covers on books? Not hardly. Good artists, plus the costs of cover design, normally cost more than a beginning author gets as an *advance*. > When I read this, I actually had a similar suggestion in a draft > email awaiting linguistic improvement after I had to abandon it in > favour of real work. > Although I was actually suggesting 3 covers - the romance one - the > exploding spaceship one and a third one just with Lois's Name and the > title on the front - for those of us who desire a more distinguished > one. I see Baen have already put up a picture with amended > buildings on their web site. > Judging from Jim's and Lois's comments there I think they are > enjoying this as much as we are. Not really. I regard that cover with a peculiar combination of postmodern(*) delight and economic terror. My personal view is that the long-standing antipathy -- sometimes quite violent -- between romance and SF is moronic, on both sides, and it is past time someone knocked it upside the head. Both/and, not either/or. But book buying persons often have personal and traumatic histories for these respective allergies, and fighting a lifetime and a whole culture's worth of social conditioning is no mean feat. I too was one of those people who wouldn't touch romance or other "girly" books with a barge pole for many years. It would, I fancied, have got me down-checked in some mysterious way; if not made me stupid, certainly made me treated as if I were. (This latter was of course a correct perception.) In my more feminist old age, I am beginning to look at the roots of this phenomenon, and say, "Wait a minute... who the hell set up these rules, and how are they getting away with it...? And whose agenda is it really advancing?" > My suggestion to make the cover more SF like is: > How about adding a few ambassadors to the side beside the armsmen: > including a Quaddie floating above one of those floating null gee > chairs they use. They would have to be quite small, but ought to be > noticeable. Of course then we would complain that there was not a > Quadie ambassador at the wedding. Also of course I have been hoping > for Miles Cetagandan 'mad crush' to turn up just to complicate his > feelings for Kat. > Martin, Auckland, New Zealand At that point, it's not a cover any more. It's a flippin' camel. This isn't a 40-foot wall mural. It's a *tiny* image. It has to be kept simple, or it will turn into mush. The other factor we are starting to run into here is publication date. The artwork must be bagged before the book can go on pre-sale to the wholesalers/bookstores, and everything for *that* must be made ready 3 to 6 months in advance of publication. How many months would you want to see ACC's publication delayed while Baen futzes with a lot of changes to the cover that make it worse art while not solving the central problem of what someone here called (and I could just hear them breaking out in hives as they said it) "pinkness"? I see it's already slipped from September to October, and I'd bet the reason is that the art's not ready. Someone transferred my post here about the intrinsic impossibility of devising an accurate cover for ACC. The book is too many things to sum up in a single image; the most one could achieve is maybe 20%. (*) Postmodern is my New Word for the week. I *knew* I knew exactly what I was doing, and I knew it wasn't nostalgia, either, but I never had a word for it. Now I do. Postmodern space opera, heh. For the Bujold reference, go to the text of Larry Wall's speech at www.perl.com, "Perl, the first postmodern computer language", at http://www.perl.com/pace/pub/perldocs/1999/03/pm.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1127: The cover up presently at the Baen website is the first of two versions of the cover art. Though it was quite well-painted, I had severe problems with the ways the characters were represented (though I liked the background), and Baen *very* obligingly (and at their expense, mind you) sent it back for a re-paint. While not as well-composed or executed as the original, the second at least came back looking more like the characters as described in the book; or at any rate, the woman looked very like herself, and the Miles face replicated the one on the Mirror Dance cover, which I've at least got used to by now. However, due to pressing time constraints, Baen had to go with the original painting for what are called the "solicitation proofs", the batch of dust jackets printed up in advance of the real printing to use to sell the book to all those middlemen. The second cover painting is the one which is supposed to be finally used; at any rate, it had my vote. We'll see. Jim liked the first version and hated the second, I hated the first and preferred the second. The mob of people I showed both to split their opinions. Argh. The moral of this story is, don't speculate too fondly upon the contents of KOMARR based on the cover art. There is no exploding flying cuisanart in the story, nor any redheads. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1756: > >The german translation is OK. They shouldn't be that hard to translate > >anyway IMHO, as the stories are character & plot driven, style is of > >secondary importance Style is of critical importance; but the tight-third-person-personal in which I write Miles is covert enough that even readers in English don't always get what I'm doing with it, hence the debate here this week. But it's not a *stylized* style; it appears quite plain at first glance, so some people don't see it. (unlike, for example in Gene Wolfe or Lem novels). > > Great big swatches of the characterization come through in nuanced > dialog, though, which is likely to be _very_ challenging to the > translator. To say the least. I've had an interesting time working with some of my translators, and have had interesting, not to mention deeply distressing, notes from some of my multi-lingual fans. One of the errors my checker *caught* in the French translation of "Borders of Infinity" was the line, "Are you a party animal?", where Miles is trying to recruit a prisoner for a break-out. In French, this came out as "Do you have gang-sex with animals?" It *really* made me wonder what that translator thought of Miles... We also went round for at least six emails trying to come up with a translation for Miles's Shakespeare quote from Romeo and Juliet in _Cetaganda_, "I am Fortune's fool". The pun won't go into French, as idiot and jester are two separate words. And none of the next-level-down reference to that moment in the play, including the howl or whisper of despair in which that line is usually delivered (which indeed I don't expect most of my English-speaking readers to catch either) came through at all. After much debate, we settled on the line from a French translation of that play, "I am the toy of destiny." Which just isn't the same thing at all, sigh. The translators routinely destroy Miles's beloved Shakespeare. (Remember, at the end of the Time of Isolation, the Barrayarans were discovered to still be putting on the Bard's plays, including "five new plays mysteriously added to the canon." I must come up with the titles of some of these someday.) The other glorious blooper was the *published* J'ai Lu translation of the motto of the US Postal Service in David Brin's book, which was reported to me in part as, "...through storm, and how are you, and dark of night..." So, what do you do when you say, "Comment allez vous?" to someone? According to the French-English dictionary this translator was using, you... hail them. I do not trust my translations in any language at all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3150: Date: 2/26/00 14:53 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" via the web Subject: UK _ACC_ cover Art and _Komarr_ is FANTASY not SF! On 2/26/00 3:19:50 AM, Martin Bonham wrote: Hm, reply/quote isn't giving me any quote this morning. Just have to wing it. As an image, the Earthlight _ACC_ cover is a nice piece of artwork. Well composed, well painted. Your cognitive dissonance and distress, Martin, is merely because you've read the book, and are wondering what the hell this picture has to do with _ACC_. Granted, anyone who buys the book on the basis of this cover art may be in for a very surprising read. (I haven't seen the cover copy, so I don't know whether it, too, is so misleading, or whether it acts as an expectation corrective.) On the other hand, no one will be embarrassed to be seen reading this unexceptionable-looking cover on a train (although seat mates may wonder why they're giggling...) My best guess is that the cover's main marketing function is to mask what the publishers imagine to be the sales-killing taint of romance and femininity. Since _ACC_ *is* simultaneously a romantic comedy, and an examination under an SF knife of the assumptions and tropes of both real-life romance and the romance genre, this distancing stance is a little hard to bring off. The syllogism goes, "Men are the main SF buyers, men won't touch romance, therefore, if this looks like a romance, sales will plummet." For all I know, this may still be true in the British market. My own subliminal impression last time I visited was that the evolution of gender relations there was about 10-20 years behind (parts of) the US, but this may be an artefact of talking mostly to guys my own age or older when I was there. To his credit, Jim was willing to put his money on the line to test this assumption last September... whereat my hardcover sales rose by perhaps 50%. There were many, many factors at work in _ACC_'s hardcover success here, so it's hard to tease out which ones were significant. It's not like we can run the experiment over and over again controlling assorted variables to find out. How much of the sales turbo-boost was gained by outcrossing from strict SF readerships? We can't tell. Still. So who's the guy in the painting? Who knows? He's dressed in black, but though rather round-faced he's not fat enough to be Mark (and no one, on either side of the Pond, would dare put a fat/short/deformed hero on a book cover anyhow), and besides both Mark and Miles have dark hair. Height is of course disguised by the pose and absence of other figures. The only blonds in the book are the Koudelka women. I suppose we can all think of the fellow as Martya Koudelka after some (future) gender reassignment therapy... Re: _Komarr_'s odd labeling as a fantasy -- well, it took you two years to notice that fine print, so I don't think it's likely very important. Fantasy & SF are shelved together anyway; all the books will be found there together under "Bujold", or, if the shelver is sufficiently confused, "McMaster". The underlying assumptions about what men and women read/are interested in are worth questioning further. Yeah, romance books and their readers are most definitely shuffled off into a more culturally despised ghetto than even SF and fantasy. And yet, it's as if they're saying, "Only women get married, and so only women can possibly be interested in marriage and its preliminaries as a subject for literature. Men never marry, or have any interest in romance, or any of those strictly female things." I mean... you do the math. There is some pretty interesting chipping away being done on these monolithic assumptions in SF at the moment. Catherine Asaro is a fascinating study in point. As a PhD in physics from a major ivy league university, her science credentials are impeccable, the science in her stories unassailable. She happily blends these with overt romantic elements. Anyone who wants to exclude these feminized elements from their ineluctably masculine SF genre on the basis of them being "not good science" are left looking pretty stupid. (In addition to being a PhD physicist, Catherine is also a ballet dancer, slim and gorgeous, and has some three or four other talents as well. If you had made her up as a character in a story, no one would belive you.) I watch her progress with some glee. Ta, Lois.