Slashdot Mirror
New Site Mocks Bad Artwork On Ebook Covers
An anonymous reader writes A British newspaper is celebrating "the world's worst ebook artwork", as discovered by the creator of a new Tumblr feed. 'It's the hubris of it that people get a kick out of — the devil-may-care attitude of an author who, with zero arts training, says to themselves: "How hard can it be?" Two different authors simply cut-and-pasted smaller images over a background showing the planets, according to one Kindle blog, which notes that one author actually pasted eyes and lips onto the planets, creating an inadvertently creepy montage. But the site's creator tells the newspaper that it's ultimately meant to be an affectionate tribute to their rejection of the mundane and appreciating each creative and beautiful mess.
"But... You're a horse"
rofl
I've seen worse artwork (or simply no artwork whatsoever) on e-books from reputable authors and publishers. Perhaps because they didn't have the rights to distribute the original artwork of the print version electronically, they just slapped on something they had lying around.
At least most of them have stopped charging more for electronic versions of a book... And they even sell them outside the US now.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
By having over-the-top bad art and getting noticed, the authors probably are going to sell more books than otherwise would have.
Mockery on the Internet. This is a dark day indeed!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Self-published ebooks mean the number of new "books" has been multiplied many times.
Ninety percent of a vastly bigger number means lots and lots of crap.
My wife is an eauthor and the houses that she signed with would usually take the lead when it came to cover designs. I can only think of one of her books she got to do (made me do for her).
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
One of my own customers for web design does her own covers. They honestly should have hired me to do them. They're like a 1990's powerpoint slide. They're absolutely horrid. The only thing keeping me from offering to do them is their horrible reviews on Amazon with multiple people complaining that the book itself contains upscaled graphics, misaligned items, etc. So basically all the books are a complete mess so why not leave the cover?
WTF is wrong with /.? Just close shop already!
But the cover is a "prank, anecdote and gag". It did its job perfectly well it appears to me.
Table-ized A.I.
The only time I see the cover for any e-book that I read is when I am on Amazon selecting a new book. Even then, I skip over the cover to the story summary and the reviews. Opening a book on my e-reader (Kindle) takes me to the first page in the first chapter. The covers are displayed on the home screen, but I only go there to open a new book.
What would be nice, assuming that Amazon ever comes out with a color e-ink reader, is if the Kindle showed the cover of the book that you are reading on the display when you shut it off. They probably don't do it today because the e-ink screen is grey-scale and the covers wouldn't look all that appealing.
Physical books required interesting graphic art to catch the eye of a book browser and to differentiate itself. Covers are much less important for e-books.
The fact that 90% of ebooks are of the weird love/LGBT/softcore/shipping/bestiality romance genera, and the fact most of those covers attempt to make allusions to the genre, there is reason enough not to sleep while you haven't seen all of the posts. PURE FUKEN GOLD.
There's WAY too many people in this world, and they all want to be authors.
I was thinking about how this is trivial and useless this was as a submission, but I clicked through, and the first cover - "Son of the Wind" is pure gold. A+++ will view again
Bad covers are just another way indies are crowding out the big publishing houses.
The artwork matched the title perfectly.
The artwork for Now That I'm a Ghost I'm Gay matched as well.
It's not just the artwork but the titles as well.
I'm nervous about making negative comments since I wonder if my ebook covers are any better;
they couldn't be worse... or are they?... http://www.k1e.org/press
living the dream
I had heard that mocking the powerless wasn't funny. The people that do this need to apologize and pay fines (contributions to political funds that oppose their views). So, what changed here? Mocking the powerless is OK now?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The creepy planet montage was not created by the book's author. Clicking through Amazon's preview reveals that someone actually hired an artist to make the cover. Yeesh.
For those with an aesthetic sensibility (you know, you care about how things look) I imagine it would be possible to edit some of these e-books in Calibre and add artwork snagged from Google Images. As an exercise in forcing myself to really read a book, I often scan, OCR, and edit a tree version (for my use only), in Libre Office Writer. I try to make the result as true to the original formatting as I reasonably can. I snag a hi-res 1st-edition cover, or one more appealing, and put it in the odt file. I then convert it to a PDF and, voila! I have an e-copy. A lot of unnecessary work, but this way I really grok the book.
Did anyone else think of the "Annoying Orange" when they saw the Young Tales of the Old Cosmos cover?
My own pet peeve is when the author uses the standard foot-mark apostrophe and inch-mark quotes instead of "curly quotes." Those are ASCII shortcuts to make typing easier, folks! Take the time to do it right!
Do you know what the worst book ever written is?
"Football: It's a Funny Old Game," by Kevin Keegan.