wow! malevich award goes to the lower-left cover's designer. i would buy and read that book for that image alone.

Do covers that "don't scream scifi" need to be this bland, to attract an audience?

Well, how else are you going to judge a book?

They need to invent books with carbon nanofibres and flat paper-speakers, so that when you pick up the book it actually screams.

"ZOMG, SO FUCKING SCI FI!!!!11!! PUT ME THE IN THE SCI FI SECTION MOTHERFUCKER! I WAS WRITTEN BY ISAAC ASIMOV!!!1!!!"

@lunadude: Absolutely. And I'm not joking. Boring cover = serious = literature = Staff Pick = front table placement.

@braak: Screaming covers. This is an great idea for all books. Can you imagine the Self-Help section, "HEY LOSER!!!"

Good cover art by an artist cost more than a graphic that one makes with software. Paintings take time and real talent. I think most sf&f fans can appreciate a great cover. And it has to have spaceship on it if I'm going to pick it up! Those Bank's covers were so lame. He should demand the artist of his choice. Some covers, like Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom are so boring it's hard to imagine any one with any vision having anything to do with it. LAME.

@jomc: But I thought Steam Punk was dead.

@Grey_Area: Well, it says "diet book," but it doesn't scream diet book. Can we turn it up a notch?

"HEY! HEY YOU WITH THE BEER GUT AND THE BUS DRIVER ASS! YOUR FAMILY FINDS YOU REPULSIVE! DON'T YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ATKINS!! ZOMG!"

@Grey_Area: Perfect.

I wonder if this is related to the "adult" covers for Harry Potter books? I've not been able to decide if those were designed to appeal to adults, or designed for adults to be seen with in public.

I tell you, there are a number of excellent sci-fi books that have covers that merit a brown paper wrapper. I'm thinking of the edition of The Snow Queen I read...it had someone's ass on the cover.

actually...this new Way Station cover is really good...it really does give you an idea of the tone of the book...
this was the edition I bought back in the day - [ecx.images-amazon.com]
horrible...
and while we're on the subject...last I heard The Way Station was in developement by Stan Winston's company and to be directed by the guy that did those Librarian TV movies...

@BloggyMcBlogBlog:
not as long as children dream and love exists in the world.

@BloggyMcBlogBlog:

also, elves or something.

@jomc: It's not often you see science fiction in a Soviet avante garde wrapper.

i'm going to expose mysyelf here as a cover bigot: assuming i have no reccomendations in hand, when browsing, i focus on two things:

1) book size; needs to be the 'larger than normal paperback size' (i'm sure there's a name for that).
2) cover quality. if it sucks, i never flip it over to read the back.

Do i miss out on a lot? sure. but honestly? i don't have all day to browse a bookstore when i want *something* but don't know what it is - this is, of course, why i love recommendations from associates.

caveats:

a) when lacking recommendations from associates, i'll check out the author pull quotes on the back of the book i just finished, to see what authors were quoted as doting on the book - they make for good fodder.
b) if the back of the books says anything even remotely resembling the phrase "a world... not unlike our own!" when talking about some future dystopia, i immediately disown the author.

@zerofritz: re: book sizes.
'larger than normal paperback size' = Trade Paperback
'normal paperback size' = Mass Market

composed a tasty rant about cover art but the comment was eaten. The Goat in the Machine? So lemme try again...
I completely agree with @Jeff-Minor: about the thoughtless stock photo n' clipart whip-ups we see on otherwise great books these days. What does it take for a publisher to pony up the dough for a decent illustration that is actually relevant to the story inside?
An aquaintance of mine in publishing has told me that some cover concepts get shot down by the buyer at Borders Books (!) who apparently only likes ultra skiffy scenes in that Harlequin Romance style of painting etc. Yeesh, might as well return to the "Tentacled BEM slavering over laser-toting space babe" covers of the 40s & 50s.
At least the days of "psychedelic" spirograph aemobas are long gone. total 1965 cheese--the Pan Books edition above is a tame example. Did anyone actually like these?

The new cover of "Way Station" does fit the general mood of the book. The story definitely doesn't "SCREAM". (Braak, you crack me up!) But would it hurt to have just a tad SpecFic injected into the scene? I'm imagining two tiny silhouettes on the porch of yonder cabin--Enoch and a tentacled BEM sippin' cider and watching the sunset...

Way Station is in my top 10 favorite SF-of-all-time books - the new, pastoral cover fits better than any of the others, but like someone above said, it needs some SF element. Not cider though - they should be drinking the coffee.

@bellil: You're right, I forgot about the coffee! hee hee

The new cover does suit the story. Simak's books are great sci fi but they always struck me as much about settings ( eg Shakespeares Planet ) and the characters as the sci-fi / fanatasy element.

One thing about cover art is that it's more about advertising than being true to the story. It's like a headline for a newspaper - designed to get your attention AND generate sales.

Any thoughts on whether cover art will change with a transition to e-books ?

@92BuickLeSabre: which in turn to me screams don't bother looking at this book. I rarely like the staff picks being shown off at the front of a book store.

HE!, no one touch WAY STATION!.. I love that book!. IMHO, the new cover is nice. Read it, a postoral image fit.

I've never bought a book based on cover art. Never. Title, perhaps. Author, certainly. But never cover art.

Kelly Freas, where are you when we need you?

I don't think the old covers were sci-fi covers either. Where's the planet, space station or spaceship?

With an author like Simak, the name is enough for most SF fans. So long as it is placed in the SF section of the bookstore, it will be bought.

An unknown author will need something extra to sell. Again, a regular SF reader will look beyond the cover, to the story line and blurbs.

I don't disagree with those who say the new cover fits the spirit of the book. Apart from the bookstore shelving issue, though, the cover's job is to sell the book to the reader. Most SF readers, unless they were specifically in search of this title -- and most of them won't even have heard of Simak, sad to say -- would look at this cover, say, "What the #%$* is this doing in the sci-fi section?", and never give the book another glance.

Surely there is another option besides "lurid" and "no evidence whatsoever of speculative content." To equate "dignified" with the latter is to imply that SF and fantasy are inherently undignified. A lot of people do believe that, but I can't imagine that they have much (if any) intersection with the set of SF readers.

BTW, I have the Collier Nucleus edition (right below the new, "classy" cover) and I like the art. I think it catches something of the spirit of the book, with the old-fashioned Midwestern house joining with the galaxy. I'd hardly classify it as "lurid." Surely you could have found some worse covers to illustrate your point, such as the one goldfarb links to.

Grey Area, are you serious about the big book boxes having a say on marketing (covers)? So, this means that people do judge a book by the cover. Well, it's good to know that our visual cortex is good for something. There are so many really good artists out there that would love to do a cover on the cheap. And considering how many bad covers are out there now, that required nothing more than a basic knowledge of photoshop, I don't think cheap covers are anything new. Might as well get some real art out of the deal. and AUTHORS should be demanding that their book covers support art, and not just the kind that the "brains" at b.b.book sellers want.

@Jeff-Minor: I know I judge books by their covers. I never would have read China Mieville if the cover of Perdido Street Station hadn't been so cool-looking.

(Actually, that's not true; a friend of mine gave it to me as a gift three years later, and so I probably would have read it then. But you see my point.)

@Slowburner: "With an author like Simak, the name is enough for most SF fans."

It's certainly nice to think so, but there are a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who consider themselves SF fans and who know nothing at all about what older fans consider classics of the genre, with just a few exceptions (Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, and not much else).

It's entirely possible that someone who picks up that book because of the lack of obvious SF signifiers on the new cover might like it better than some of the people I know online who consider themselves SF fans but only want stuff that feels like a Star Wars or Star Trek knockoff.

@Grey_Area: Winner.

@Jeff-Minor: re: "b.b.book sellers..."
Yup, real deal. My source has mentioned this whenever we kvetch about cover design.