Wolf and Terrible Cover Design
So today, we found out what the US cover of Spice and Wolf volume 1 is going to look like. It is pretty terrible. It looks like either a terrible teen novel like Twilight or a terrible trashy romance novel that you’d pick up at some supermarket. I understand that you don’t want to publish a book with an anime wolf-girl on the cover, that’s fine. I’m not sure how a naked wolf-girl advances the notion that Spice and Wolf is quality stuff any better though. And of course, their offer of an alternate slipcover in an issue of Yen+ isn’t really enough to make me go out and buy a volume.
So in about five minutes, I’ve managed to think up a better cover design. The problem beyond the cover being terrible is how they plan to make covers for future volumes have the same look and feel. My ideal cover would be some sort of sketch or watercolour of the place they’re visiting, say a field of wheat for volume one or Rubenhaigen for volume two, and Lawrence’s cart somewhere on the cover. There, we have a classy cover scheme that conveys the atmosphere of Spice and Wolf, fits the target audience (light, fantasy, not trash), and can be extended for future volumes.
It’s baffling because their Haruhi cover redesigns were actually pretty good. The silhouette of Haruhi is recognizably Haruhi and the use of a bright solid colour makes it easy to distinguish volumes apart while keeping them visually consistent.
It’s unfortunate, because I was looking forward to buying Spice and Wolf much more than Haruhi. I guess that won’t be happening now.
Tags: Anime, Design, light novels
bah that doesn’t even look like a anime/manga sketch anymore.
does it come with the original drawings inside the covers though?
I hadn’t even thought that far ahead – either they’re dooming the world to successive volumes with similarly-designed covers, or we’re going to wind up with a series where the covers bear no similarities to one another, which is kind of a marketing no-no.
Re-posting how I feel everywhere.
Yen Press are a sadly, laughable group of individuals. They continue to make horrible decisions. Relying on them is like keeping a bad girlfriend. She tells you she is gonna do things, but then doesn’t. She lies about caring about you. She only cares about what she is doing at that moment, and can’t be bothered to actually do what needs to be done.
To be blunt. This website(yenpress.us) got a about a 500% increase in comments, deleted comments, and general traffic during the height of this debacle. And they did nothing. LOL, one online retailer sent out covers, is nothing. They either never cared, or froze up like the guy that dies first on the battlefield. Weeks after the book has been released, and still no word from Hassler about more places to get a cover, even though he said he would update the list(lol, not likely huh?). You have failed to release a download-able/printable version of the cover, even after I, and others have posted links to one, here, in this very comment section. By the way Hassler(I once felt bad for you), saying “we simply aren’t set up with a direct-to-consumer infrastructure.”, only means that Yen Press isn’t going to do anything. Way to be a company echo.
To sum it all up. I believe Yen Press has failed to bring fans an acceptable product(proven by the sheer amount of people who agree). And have failed to make amends(People are still angry, and still talk about it on internet forums). So I have no sympathy for them. I hope they fail.