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Nithuir t1_jdutp01 wrote

I swear it's a rule, if the main character is a woman, that's what goes on the cover and she has to be sexy and look nothing like the author's description. If the MC is a man, the cover gets to be something plot related, an action scene or a dragon or something.

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glister_and_gold OP t1_jduuuea wrote

It drives me nuts. I love fantasy and romance novels and I can’t tell you how many feminist works are hidden behind poorly done photoshops of sexy women. Most authors don’t get a say in the cover design, unfortunately.

My illustration class in college visited a man who did book covers for fantasy works and it was just awful. He said he refused to read any part of the book (it would get in the way of his “creativity”), only begrudgingly read the summary they sent him, and never asked questions about things like the appearance of the protagonist, the setting, or anything else. He was super proud of this and told us that he did what he wanted and they just had to deal with it.

Unsurprisingly, all of his work was, while highly technically accomplished, extremely bland and lacked anything unique about the books he was painting for. It was basically generic fantasy background, generic fantasy man, or generic fantasy woman.

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AverageTurky t1_jdv3em5 wrote

Good lord. He sounds exceptionally arrogant for someone only doing the bare minimum to keep being commissioned.

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glister_and_gold OP t1_jdv6ixs wrote

He was awful, which tracks because that professor was a similar kind of awful and they were friends. We did a book cover design project for that class and she complimented someone for not making the black people she drew too dark skinned. (Yep, she got reported by a lot of people.)

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GeorgeBarretWriter t1_jdyqh4g wrote

I agree. I think an author should have more say about the cover.

Such as my book, “The Sanguine Elf”, in which I worked with the cover artist in order to get the leading lady of the story to be as accurate as possible. As far as the sexy factor, I’m not sure if there is that because the expression on her face is so sullen and sad and full of resentment of her fate.

If you’d like, I can show it to you.

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yallscrazy t1_jdw0b6z wrote

It can't possibly have anything to do with women being more social than men and men being more object oriented.....

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