New Warded Man Hardcovers — On Sale!
Posted by Peat
Collectors rejoice! There is a new US Warded Man hardcover on sale now!
You may recall that when the hardcover of The Warded Man first came out back in 2009, it was released with a different cover than that which now graces the paperbacks and it’s 2008 UK counterpart, The Painted Man.
Del Rey had told me they wanted to go a different creative direction from the UK title/art, but at this stage in my career, there wasn’t much budget behind me, and the industry was pulling away from painted covers to focus on ones a graphic designer could pull together with pieces of stock art. This was their first attempt:
Now, I won’t say this was the worst cover in the history of fantasy covers, but, let’s be honest, it’s a contender. It looks like a Dianetics cover, with a bunch of fantasy elements slapped together. The ward is pretty, but without any context, it’s pretty much meaningless. The twilight city in the distance, what is that? Miln? I don’t know.
I was a first time author and didn’t have a lot of pull, but I had a great agent and a lot of passion to not have my book hamstrung by an awful cover. There was a lot of back and forth, and eventually we came to a compromise no one was entirely happy with:
I won’t say it was the second worst cover in fantasy history, but let’s face it, also a contender. It’s not unpleasant to look upon, but the purpose of a cover is to sell the book, and this cover fails in that regard, attempting to appeal to both mainstream and fantasy readers, and in the end reaching neither. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the series didn’t really take off until we switched to the UK Larry Rostant cover with the paperback and following hardcovers.
But the collector in me, the one who likes neat, orderly shelves and consistency of design always railed at that first book. A love/hate relationship for a book that means so very much to me.
So it is with great pleasure that I can announce that Del Rey has gone back to press with a LIMITED EDITION WARDED MAN HARDCOVER with the original Rostant art:
Gorgeous. It was such a heartwarming thrill to open the first box of them. I won’t lie. I hugged one like I never wanted to let it go.
These new editions are available exclusively online from Amazon and Books a Million, and from select specialty retailers like Mysterious Galaxy (who still have some signed copies from Phoenix ComicCon).
Get ’em while they last.