The UK Cover of Starter Villain
Posted on March 16, 2023 Posted by John Scalzi 14 Comments
Which is, as you all know, my upcoming novel, to be released this September (September 21 in the UK, to be exact). The UK cover is of a kind with the UK cover of The Kaiju Preservation Society, which I think is pretty nifty, as both books are set in contemporary time, even with their significant science fictional elements. They have things in common. And yes, the book namechecks a number of cinematic villains, you can probably guess one of them by the cover. A Scalzi book referencing pop culture should not be a surprise at this point.
Where’s the US/Canada cover for the book, you may ask? It’s coming. I think you’ll like it when you see it. In the meantime, you have this. It’s pretty nifty, if I do say so myself.
— JS
“Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mister Notbond, I expect you to be quiet and read!”
Congratulations, it’s a great cover. I’m looking forward to the book’s release.
Thanks for the heads-up! I just preordered mine!
I understand why a translated book might have a different cover, but why do books have different covers in different countries when the language is clearly the same, discounting for the time being the oddities of UK English as an excuse to claim American English is a different language?
Licensing rights, Lots of books have a different publisher over here and have different covers.
Also book covers sell very differently to what sells in America
The book was great. Nice to see some of the shoutouts in the book.
That’s one oversized game controller of a chair. I hope its owner doesn’t call it “The Throne of Games”.
Looks like I’ll have some re-watching of old Bond movies coming up!
Cover looks great!
soooo… is the villain the smirking human (holding the cat)? or the cat (groomed by a loyal henchman)?
So … there’ll be a cat in it? I mean, I was gonna buy it anyway, but CAT?
I’m quite upset by the fact that when I see an image like your cover, my first thought is of Dr. Evil, and alas not Blofeld. Damn you Mike Myers! ;)
Seems fake to me.
If it were an authentic Scalzi cover, that cat would have a piece of bacon taped to it.
Musereader: I bought most of Terry Pratchett’s later books in UK editions, because the cover art was gorgeous and the US versions hideous.
(As well as inaccurate: Unseen Academicals, which involves football – soccer – has a bunch of hands/claws/paws reaching for…a basketball.)
His US publisher finally wised up and made a deal to use the UK art for the last few books.
I will say that this was a great change from several decades ago; when I first visited the UK as an exchange student, most SF and fantasy cover art was incredibly generic, boring, and/or ugly.
(I have kept the paperback of The Hobbit I bought then, just for the exceptionally beautiful cover of Smaug on his pile of treasure.)
On a side note, one of the cleverest cover designs I’ve seen is the US paperbacks of Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens. Half of them are black, with Crowley on the front and Azraephal on the back, and Gaiman’s name listed first; the other half are white, with the cover characters reversed and Pratchett given top billing.