Tuesday 22 December 2015

The Wheel of Osheim has a cover!

First came the roughs:

These sort of things reach me by a trickle-down effect. Contrary to common assumption traditionally published authors (at least at my level) have almost no say in their cover design. They might be asked for a selection of scenes the artist could consider, they might be asked for descriptions of the characters, but basically they're bystanders. Which means I can't take any of the credit for my covers, and that the fact that they are (in my opinion) excellent, is someone else's triumph and my good luck.

Each year Jason Chan provides the publishers with a number of sketches and they decide which one to take forward to a full cover.

These are the three I know about for The Wheel of Osheim.





The powers that be at Ace decided to go ahead with this one. Jason Chan polished it to a high shine (see the stages for King of Thorns), the art department at Ace worked on titles, quotes, and background, and presto:


Voyager are going to use the same artwork for the UK cover. Like Ace they'll send it to their art department to work on the lettering and background in order to ensure it fits in alongside the previous covers.

5 comments:

  1. Great cover! Absolutely beautiful. Love the art, the fonts, the layout, the colors, everything. I can only hope to one day (when my epic medieval-fantasy manuscript is finished) have a cover close to this. Cannot wait to read it, Mark Lawrence!

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  2. Brilliant concepts, personally I prefer the underwater one, but I hope the publishers prove me wrong with all the extra sales a great cover will get you!

    I draw as well as write so I'm still under the delusion I will draw my own cover art if I ever get published!! :S

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  3. Very cool!
    This blog needs like and share buttons.

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    Replies
    1. There's a share button above the comment section! It's just that it's very small. :) Happy new year!

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