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Fantasy author Terry Goodkind publicly shames his own cover artist on social media

Pixel Grotto

Pixel Grotto

Member
Oct 27, 2017
894
Saw this just now and was stunned.

DW1uHCWUQAAMl8p.jpg:large


It's real. The original post on Terry Goodkind's Facebook is here while Bastien's Facebook is here.

I understand that a lot of authors never see their final covers until books are gearing up for release but this just seems extremely unprofessional. I admit that I haven't read Terry Goodkind's works yet - I always put them off because his flavor of fantasy seemed kind of pretentious to me - and this doesn't change my opinion much. Anyone actually read this series?

EDIT: Goodkind posted a clarification/apology a few hours ago on Facebook.

Hi folks. First, thank you everyone for all of your passion and taking the time to post. I'm reading some of the comments being shared and I want to clarify a few things. The contest and poll below, is poking fun at my own book. The artist is obviously an exceptionally talented creative. The problem is with the publisher. I created the poll as a way to poke fun at the cover art, because it is a poor representation of characters within the book. Characters I am deeply passionate about. It's impossible not to be emotional about such things, when I've spent the last 30 years of my life devoted to their every nuance.

In no way do I feel the quality of the art is rendered poorly. For any misunderstanding, I apologize to the artist, his friends, and of course my own community here.

Before becoming a writer, I was a working artist myself. I was a painter, sculptor, and I restored antiquities. It's a difficult path and I hold the profession with the greatest reverence.

My dissatisfaction with the art isn't the artist's fault, of course; the art was commissioned and directed by the publisher.

The intention of our contest was to instead encourage my publisher to devote more thoughtful consideration with the artwork they wrap around my books. To more carefully value the characters and to be more respectful of my work and the readers. Gallows humor. To have a bit of fun and take a bite out of myself while we do it.

For 'SHROUD OF ETERNITY', I was sent the cover art shortly before publication. We all expressed our dissatisfaction with the character representation of the artwork and we protested the printing. We were overruled and the book went to print as-is. Sometimes that happens. It stings to see a publisher not always seem to care as much as we do.

Thank you all for taking the time to read, respond, and share today. We'll still pick 10 folks to receive autographed copies of the book and we're going to leave the poll running for the sake of the contest. We promised to give away books, so we'll still do that.
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Platy

Platy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
27,703
Brazil
I expected some kind of Dance of Death type of cover that they saw the sketch and think it was final .... this cover is awesome wtf is he thinking ?
 
Static

Static

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
I'm no cover critic but it looks fine to me. I wonder what Goodkind's complaints are?

Kind of a dick move, regardless.
 
hjort

hjort

Member
Nov 9, 2017
4,096
So, neither good nor kind then.

EDIT: Ah, he's the Ayn Rand fan. Well there you go then.
 
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Tagyhag

Tagyhag

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,507
Man, it's not an amazing cover or anything but it's fine. Dude is fucked up.

Even if it was terrible I wouldn't publicly make fun of it like that.
 

Deleted member 11370

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,494
That's neither good nor kind, Terry.

I like the cover. Not knowing what the story is about it looks a bit generic, but it's nowhere as artistically bad as the author of the book is making it up to be.
 
Camwi

Camwi

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,375
I mean, is it awful from the perspective of the story? Because it looks nice as someone who has no idea the context here.
 
Pop-O-Matic

Pop-O-Matic

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
12,899
Oh yes, Terry Goodkind. The guy who writes books like this:

TV Tropes said:
"Soul of the Fire" describes a minority group that keeps itself in power by controlling the schools and teaching everyone in their society that they were the victim of a horrible injustice in the past and are therefore owed a great debt by the "evil" majority (and the horrible injustice may not have actually happened in the first place). They used this (along with being moneylenders who control the economy) to take control of the entire country during a crisis. Parallels to real-world groups are left as an exercise to the reader.
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Cosmonaut X

Cosmonaut X

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,947
The cover art is well-rendered if uninspired, but I've seen far, far worse. The design treatment is meh, but that's not the illustrator's problem.

Utterly shameful way to treat the illustrator, especially if they were working to instruction from the publisher.
 

Shoeless

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,000
My wife's an illustrator. She was SO not on board with this when she showed me the story.
 
BernardoOne

BernardoOne

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,289
Outside the silly font and the author's name being way too large, i don't see the issue with the cover art itself? Looks fine.
 
SugarNoodles

SugarNoodles

Member
Nov 3, 2017
8,625
Portland, OR
Aside from disrespectful and unprofessional, it's incredibly unfair to the artist. It's not some original piece of art dreamt up by the artist. It's a very specific contract job where the artist is given strict specifications and the result is drafted and approved.
 
Dunban

Dunban

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,051
Pixel Grotto said:
Anyone actually read this series?
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The vast majority of it. It's terrible in basically every metric by which one would assess literature, and it largely exists as a soapbox through which Goodkind espouses his Randian Objectivism, which is going to be anathema for anyone posting on this particular forum. I'd steer clear if you value your time.

There's a ton of misogyny, thinly-veiled racism and the like, too.
 
Gundam

Gundam

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
12,801
Way to jerk your own dick off by calling your own book great, too.

I like this cover. Nothing mind-blowing, but it reminds me of a cool album cover.
 
Logos

Logos

User requested ban
Banned
Dec 1, 2017
244
Decided to look up another book in this series, and it's this same cover just different setting. Wonder why he suddenly lost his shit and doesn't like it.

29939366.jpg
 
Camwi

Camwi

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,375
He made a poll on his Facebook page. Everyone here should vote that the cover is great (even if you don't particularly like it).
 
Silvergun-Blue

Silvergun-Blue

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,939
What a massive twat.

When artists create book covers, I believe the process is that they're just given a brief and they don't paint a scene based on their own personal perception of the characters or parts of the book. Chances are they haven't even read the book at all.
 
SupremeWu

SupremeWu

Banned
Dec 19, 2017
2,856
The cover looks fine, I guess he's angry that the characters aren't 'in character' or whatever but, it's not really the job of a cover to tell the story. There's a whole famous saying about it.

The art and compisition is competent and if anything's ruining it, it's the stupid giant font his name is in.
 
Digital Dinosaur

Digital Dinosaur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,052
Rita Repulsa's Moon Palace
Ok, the artist looks to be extraordinarily skilled and studied in fine art.

In my experience, the requirements of a commission and the demands of the art director end up being responsible for a lot of great artists producing something with problems or simply sub-par. No artist can afford to take an unlimited amount of time to make bad direction look good.

The cover here doesn't even look bad.
 
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