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Alternate History Fiction & Cover Art; Or What Attracts Me As A Reader & Reviewer

Skinny87

en.wiki veteran (Airborne Warfare Wikistar)
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Published by SLP
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I've been wanting to write something like this for a while, but I've never quite had the time to devote to it until now. As a someone who's been reviewing Alternate History titles for a couple of years now (and indeed several other genres, especially horror), I've found that I've come up with as number of thoughts about the use of cover art for alternate history titles; and how a good piece of cover art can instantly attract my attention as a reader/reviewer, but a bad piece can push me away and make me scroll downwards through the Kindle listings.

Now, obviously some provisos first: I'm in no way a cover artist, or an illustrator, graphic designer or anything else like that, and I've no doubt that my attempts to create a piece of cover art would be disastrous at best. I understand that finding a skilled illustrator/artists can be difficult and extremely expensive to do, especially for an author self-publishing, or going through an independent publisher. So none of the (hopefully helpful) points and criticisms I make below are meant personally - they're just my thoughts.

Part I: Unrepresentative Cover Art

What makes a bad piece of cover art? Honestly there are quite a few things that can make a piece bad, but surely the greatest sin is that it doesn't correctly illustrate what the author's story is about. When I think about this, one Alternate History title always come back to me - in fact it's one I (eventually) reviewed on the SLP Blog:

415EUxMeATL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Reich of Renegades by Mark Lynch is, in fact, a fantastic piece of Alternate History fiction that goes into the realities of what the Ostfront colonies would have looked like if the Third Reich had been triumphant. But I passed on it multiple times before properly reading the back-cover blurb and taking a chance. Almost nothing about this cover - apart from the excellent title itself - either attracts my eye as a reader, or conveys what the text is about. Why is there a picture of generic ruins? Little of the plot takes place in a ruined city, though I'll grant that tracts of Eastern Europe are ruined after the Second World War. And, most of all, why is everything green? I genuinely thought this was meant to represent radioactivity or nuclear war, and passed on it for that reason; although the Reich's nuclear program is mentioned in passing, again it's only a minor aspect of Reich of Renegade's plot. Even the font doesn't help, being stretched upwards.

The sequel, Soldier of the Reich, is even worse:

51t0G-FC27L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

When I saw this, I genuinely thought this was one of those dodgy Waffen-SS memoirs where they go on about blood and soil and honour and forget to mention all of the Einsatzgruppen and the dead Jews. Apart from the tiny text banner at the top, I wouldn't have even remotely associated this with Reich of Renegades, espevially because that's about the most generic title I can think of producing. Unfortunately it's a bit disappointing as sequels go as well.

These, to me, are classic examples of unrepresentative cover art for a title. But Skinny, you would rightly say, if one is on an incredibly limited (or even non-existent budget) then surely this is the best you can do?

And I would say that isn't true, because have you seen what @Cymraeg has done with his cover art?

I hope that Cymraeg doesn't mind me using his cover art as a positive example, but look at the cover for The Fireflies of Port Stanley:

51m7kjnVcDL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Look at how clean and crisp everything is here. The text stands out, nice border around the cover, and most importantly we get the main themes of the book: a map of the Falkland Islands with Port Stanley highlighted, and a Sherman Firefly below it. Basic, yes, but perfectly done. From this, I can readily infer that the Falklands conflict in 1982 will be proceeding differently, and for whatever narrative reason this will involve the presence of some Sherman Firefly tanks. I am now intrigued enough to purchase the book.

Or look at the cover art for Splinters: A Different El Alamein

Jones.jpg

Still done on a small budget, but very smartly done: a neutral, pale background, some nice font choice that's easy on the eye and not stretched around, and a simple piece of imagery in the middle that's both relevant to the title's central thesis (A different El Alamein, as the subtitle proclaims) and eye-catching.

Those are my thoughts so far, and I hope they've come across as useful and critical, rather than harsh. Next up is Part II: Generic Cover Art; or, I See You Have Access To The Getty Images Archive
 
I've been wanting to write something like this for a while, but I've never quite had the time to devote to it until now. As a someone who's been reviewing Alternate History titles for a couple of years now (and indeed several other genres, especially horror), I've found that I've come up with as number of thoughts about the use of cover art for alternate history titles; and how a good piece of cover art can instantly attract my attention as a reader/reviewer, but a bad piece can push me away and make me scroll downwards through the Kindle listings.

Now, obviously some provisos first: I'm in no way a cover artist, or an illustrator, graphic designer or anything else like that, and I've no doubt that my attempts to create a piece of cover art would be disastrous at best. I understand that finding a skilled illustrator/artists can be difficult and extremely expensive to do, especially for an author self-publishing, or going through an independent publisher. So none of the (hopefully helpful) points and criticisms I make below are meant personally - they're just my thoughts.

Part I: Unrepresentative Cover Art

What makes a bad piece of cover art? Honestly there are quite a few things that can make a piece bad, but surely the greatest sin is that it doesn't correctly illustrate what the author's story is about. When I think about this, one Alternate History title always come back to me - in fact it's one I (eventually) reviewed on the SLP Blog:

View attachment 13912

Reich of Renegades by Mark Lynch is, in fact, a fantastic piece of Alternate History fiction that goes into the realities of what the Ostfront colonies would have looked like if the Third Reich had been triumphant. But I passed on it multiple times before properly reading the back-cover blurb and taking a chance. Almost nothing about this cover - apart from the excellent title itself - either attracts my eye as a reader, or conveys what the text is about. Why is there a picture of generic ruins? Little of the plot takes place in a ruined city, though I'll grant that tracts of Eastern Europe are ruined after the Second World War. And, most of all, why is everything green? I genuinely thought this was meant to represent radioactivity or nuclear war, and passed on it for that reason; although the Reich's nuclear program is mentioned in passing, again it's only a minor aspect of Reich of Renegade's plot. Even the font doesn't help, being stretched upwards.

The sequel, Soldier of the Reich, is even worse:

View attachment 13913

When I saw this, I genuinely thought this was one of those dodgy Waffen-SS memoirs where they go on about blood and soil and honour and forget to mention all of the Einsatzgruppen and the dead Jews. Apart from the tiny text banner at the top, I wouldn't have even remotely associated this with Reich of Renegades, espevially because that's about the most generic title I can think of producing. Unfortunately it's a bit disappointing as sequels go as well.

These, to me, are classic examples of unrepresentative cover art for a title. But Skinny, you would rightly say, if one is on an incredibly limited (or even non-existent budget) then surely this is the best you can do?

And I would say that isn't true, because have you seen what @Cymraeg has done with his cover art?

I hope that Cymraeg doesn't mind me using his cover art as a positive example, but look at the cover for The Fireflies of Port Stanley:

View attachment 13916

Look at how clean and crisp everything is here. The text stands out, nice border around the cover, and most importantly we get the main themes of the book: a map of the Falkland Islands with Port Stanley highlighted, and a Sherman Firefly below it. Basic, yes, but perfectly done. From this, I can readily infer that the Falklands conflict in 1982 will be proceeding differently, and for whatever narrative reason this will involve the presence of some Sherman Firefly tanks. I am now intrigued enough to purchase the book.

Or look at the cover art for Splinters: A Different El Alamein

View attachment 13917

Still done on a small budget, but very smartly done: a neutral, pale background, some nice font choice that's easy on the eye and not stretched around, and a simple piece of imagery in the middle that's both relevant to the title's central thesis (A different El Alamein, as the subtitle proclaims) and eye-catching.

Those are my thoughts so far, and I hope they've come across as useful and critical, rather than harsh. Next up is Part II: Generic Cover Art; or, I See You Have Access To The Getty Images Archive

Thank you for the praise! I have to thank my lovely wife Kathleen for the designs of those covers. She missed her calling as a graphic designer - she has an eye for art that I lack.
 
As someone who has self-published and usually had a budget of £0, figuring out covers - alternate history and otherwise - gives me the willies, for the reasons give above:

a) Does this actually indicate what the book's like/about?
b) Is it generic?
c) Does it still look good if a and b are solved?
 
I'm honestly gonna have to argue about calling The Fireflies of Port Stanley a good cover. At first gloss the title suggests chick material (how romantic! A beach with fireflies!) and then the cover is a total whiplash: Generic American tank with looooong barrel is long, and a slightly out of focus map. Whiplash by itself isn't bad, but there's nothing to transition to a new bearing that's tied together coherently. You've got... an island... and a tank... and a title. The data points ain't lining up. If you know why the Falklands are important and what a Firefly tank is it makes more sense, but those two points aren't a general audiance-catcher. If we want a good conventional cover, I'll pull some from the SLP catalog: specifically, a new release and an older one too.

xbgXxWD.png

The first thing to state is that this is artwork. I may not like the style, but it's art and not some photorealism render or Getty Stock Image or thing hauled off an archive site. Art and style catch the eye, and they always will. The art also relates to the title well, since it is night in the image and the focus of the work is an exotic-looking building to go with the exotic-sounding location (despite the fact the reference building is nowhere near the Bosporus) so it all ties together fairly well. There's also the blimp/spotlight combination that seems to be the hallmark of the A Century Turns series, somehow, which ties it together as well as can be. The ideas are big, easily interpreted, and have a strong logical line through them without any contradictions- and that's possibly the most important part of a cover that seperates "good and bland" from "formless paste from the Bureaucrats"

8b1LFxo.png

Towards the Glittering Sunset is likewise strong because it uses simplicity to it's benefit. Aside from the standard bonus that is an artistic cover, it also has a clearly defined subject which can make the title have a few clear explanations (Is it sunset on the British Empire? Is it the promised land at the end of the road? Heck if I know, I can't afford the book right now.) and most importantly it also has a nice centrally-placed figure to bring the eye to and hint at when the book takes place. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there's not enough to tie AH together into a genre by literary standards, which directly means it's the onus of the author to make sure there's some other guiding light that'll sucker in the readers. This helps a lot by giving us a distinct era to look at (Elizabethean or maybe one of the Edwards, I think) to narrow down our choice of what exactly this book is. There's also a pretty nice bit of subversion in the art which may be entirely accidental- the royalty figure is looking into the sunrise. Most of the Cliffs of Dover run with the sea to the south or the east, and in either case for the sun to be coming up on the sea-side of the Cliffs means the cover is shot on the northern stretch.
 
If you know why the Falklands are important and what a Firefly tank is it makes more sense, but those two points aren't a general audiance-catcher.

I agree, but the book's managed to rack up dozens of reviews (many good) and has a respectible position in AH UK sellers for a book that's been out a while, so it's definitely a cover that's working for the audience it's aimed at.
 
I agree, but the book's managed to rack up dozens of reviews (many good) and has a respectible position in AH UK sellers for a book that's been out a while, so it's definitely a cover that's working for the audience it's aimed at.

That's absolutely true, but you also need general appeal since most genres don't have a central hub you can tie into to get good distribution. You can do both at once- we do that fairly well, and it's what the super-generic covers on a lot of things shoot for (the original Misfit Squadron did this pretty well) and miss at.
 
I've been browsing my usual Fuldapocalypse-style books, and saw a perfect example of this.

First. Behold the cover for Operation Zhukov (the book itself from the samples doesn't exactly look the most appealing either, but for now that's beside the point):

X9VcRQn.jpg


Now, does that give the impression of an east-west Fuldapocalyptic clash? At all? Or, really, anything at all?

Now for something somewhat better, the second installment of Andy Farman's Armageddon's Song series, Advance To Contact. It's also a World War III book with cheesy flames on the cover.

WO1fgW4.jpg


Still not the best, but at least you can see clearly what the book is about from the tank on the front.
 
I look this up and I see Zhukov writer's Operation Temperate is the same cover! That's taking the mickey a bit

41-VEFP6pxL._SY346_.jpg

This style of cover - generic background image, solid horizontal bar with title in - is becoming very popular these days across all the genres and not sure why. It is literally the most generic cover art possible.
 
I think one of the best covers in counterfactual history - outside those of SLP - is Andrew Roberts' edited volume What Might Have Been.

1571514384765.png

Remembering that this predated Iron Sky by 8 years. It's very simple, and immediately you know what difference there has been in this alternate universe. The book itself is a great disappointment. There are two, maybe three, essays within it that have some worth as a piece of alternate history, rather than just being, "and everything turned out the same, except no one in OTL's present day has heard of Charlemagne."

None of them involve Nazis on the moon.
 
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