People have been asking me for a while about the cover for the U.S. edition of The Night Itself - which is coming out in November under the title THE NAME OF THE BLADE from Candlewick Press. Originally they were going to go with the illustrated UK cover, but obviously then the UK cover changed to a photographic one. So they went off again and designed an entirely new piece of artwork, which I was asked to keep firmly under my hat for the time being.
However, yesterday I recieved a lovely package from Candlewick, containing advanced reader's copies (or ARCs) of THE NAME OF THE BLADE with the US cover in place. So I decided it was probably OK to share the cover artwork now. This is based on the fact that the last time I had a book coming out in the US, I held off from sharing the cover for a very long time, waiting to get official permission, even after the image had turned up on the publisher website, NetGalley, and Amazon, and people started sending it me asking me what it was. I ended up feeling like a bit of a twit. This time I'd like to get in first.
So without further ado, I present to you:
On the physical version, I'm told that the yellow and metallic bits you see - the lettering, and the sword - will be in silver and gold foil, with the rest of the cover in a matt finish. As far as I'm aware this will be a hardcover release.
It's very different from any other urban fantasy covers, isn't it? What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments!
I have a couple of ARCs of THE NAME OF THE BLADE going spare, so I'm thinking about maybe combining these with other bits and pieces I have to hand and doing a giveaway next week - more on that when I've worked it out.
Oh, and heads-up that I'm posting on the Author Allsorts about how I write this Friday, so tune in for that. I'll probably post a link here just as a reminder :)
10 comments:
I love the cover! It definitely stands out and suits the book.
Thanks, Isabel! I'm a little sad that they didn't use the amazing new UK covers, but I'm really glad you like this :)
Yaaaay! I like it and yeah, it definitely doesn't look like most urban fantasy covers out there. As you know, I adored the original illustrated UK cover for TNI. So I like that the US version is also illustrated and kind of makes a nod to that original cover. (I just like illustrated covers a lot!)
Congrats! Now you have 3 cool covers for The Name of the Blade Book 1!
Krispy: Yay back! I'm so happy people like it - it's so different, I was a bit worried everyone would just go 'Blergh'. I think it's my first typographical cover, so it's unique.
I'm a huge fan of illustrated covers, and I'm so glad Candlewick decided to go with such an awesome one!
Thank you, Q! I'm really relieved that the response is so positive.
I like that the cover doesn't look like it's specifically targeted at girls. As wrong as they would be I think some boys may automatically judge the book with the other covers as being a so-called *girly* books.
Anon: Well, they are quite girly - in that they were written by a girl and the main character is a girl. So I don't see anything wrong with covers which acknowledge that. The UK covers are pretty gender neutral, really. This US one is just *more* gender neutral.
Why are different covers used for the same book in different countries? Is one type of cover supposed to be more appealing to Americans and another type of cover more appealing to British or something?
Lesley: That is a very good question. I started typing out a really (really) long, detailed answer to this, and then realised it would probably be better to reply in a blogpost where I can actually do it justice - so I'll do that next week, OK? Keep an eye out.
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