Monday, December 01, 2008

Paperback Writer

One of the many pleasures of the MNW soiree at Len Tyler's on Friday was the chance to catch up with my editor Will. As well as articulating--perhaps for the first time--what The Last Free City is 'about', I also got Will's permission to put the proof of The Dog of the North's paperback cover on the blog. I thought the hardback was great, but this is even better.




This is a proof, so for those of you with excessive attention to detail, it will be published by Tor, not Pan, and--this may come as a shock--The Dog of the North is not non-fiction.

With its brooding restraint, I think this is a glorious cover. 'Never judge a book by its cover', while undoubtedly sage advice, takes no account of how people behave in practice, so I'm indebted to Macmillan's graphic department for a cover so in keeping with the book.

8 comments:

Alis said...

That is a very cool paperback!

David Isaak said...

Oh, they've done that up very nicely indeed!

The difference between the paperback and hardback covers is very interesting--though yours preserves elements of the hardback design much more than others (look at the differences in the two versions of Matt Curran's, for example!

Tim Stretton said...

Will and I discussed the paperback cover at length. The aim was to provide a more explicitly genre cover while still retaining the feel of the original. Having a figure in armour was apparently central to this!

The element of the novel that seemed to attract the most favourable comment was Mettingloom (sadly, as there's nothing close to it anywhere else in my work...) so in some ways I'm surprised that there was no attempt to represent this in the cover art. It could have made a wonderful image.

Alis said...

Yeah, Mettingloom rocks!

mattfwcurran.com Web Admin said...

Woah. Very, very cool paperback cover, Tim. Has that dark brooding look with similar colour palette to The Two Towers poster campaign.

Might have to buy the paperback as well now... bugger.

Yeah, The Secret War covers are very different. I guess Pan Mac wanted to go with a series look, hence the change. I much prefer the new MNW covers to the older ones (though for sentimental reasons, I'll always be fond of my first book cover!)

Akasha Savage. said...

How exciting. What fabulous covers, hardback and paperback...you must be thrilled to bits. :)

Tim Stretton said...

It's very satisfying to have professional artists working on your story. Having produced my own covers when I was self-publishing makes me appreciate the work of competent artists all the more!

Mihai A. said...

It looks really great and although the hardback cover looks interesting I found this one much better :)