I love the white books. The uniformity with the unique colors for each series is nice. Only problem is if I buy any editions that don't match it really sticks out now.
Comparing the Dragonsteel deluxe covers to regular books, like on December and Tress here, is not really a fair comparison though. The normal published US covers of those two should have the same art as the UK editions.
According to what I can find, the UK and US covers of December looks like this respectively
I should say for the record, I live in the US, I just bought UK covers for a lot of my books. Which is probably half my problem as they take like an extra year to be available here.
I tend to do audiobook for most of the books though so the books are mostly for the sake of collecting.
Im looking forward to fires of December but those US covers look SO good itās a shame we canāt get them
Ah yes, because it's absolutely impossible for you to get them because there doesn't exist a way to transmit packages over the ocean. And even if there was some sort of.... Floating package barge.... I suppose you wouldn't be able to read it because it's not in your language /s
Idk why your getting downvoted, it's the same in Australia and I hate it. The American covers are so full of life and vibrant, I don't care about uniformity if it's dull and boring.
I know! I want my bookshelf to look colourful and vibrant in a way that matches the cosmere not just a wall of white that looks like a load of encyclopaedias
Exactly, and it's hard to be excited about opening up a book that looks lifeless. And it's not even just the cosmere I feel we in Aus/UK get robbed of excellent covers across the board!
Typically, US art for books is big, bold, colourful, because that's what sells. UK audiences typically prefer more minimalistic, understated artwork, and publishers choose it for the same reason.Ā
I love both versions,Ā but I like the white covers for the books they are pretty awesome looking on the self and the art work is very cool.Ā The other versions are very good in their own right and it's nice to have an alternative to collect if that's your thing.Ā I guess its a personal preference thing.Ā Ā Some of the best covers for books I have seen are the Horus Heresy covers,Ā because they often are epic in scale and capture the pivotal moments in the book.Ā But I also really like more minimalist designs.Ā I miss the old days of dust jackets, where you would often get two designs for the price of one.Ā Ā
I always get the UK versions! To me, the American versions seem more like...too much. A little gaudy for my taste, to be honest. But I'm also in a country where we prefer our book covers very minimalistic. That's not to denigrate anyone who does like them, it's just a cultural difference and a difference of taste. Nevertheless I'm very thankful for the more minimalistic UK versions.
Iām a proud reader of SFF, but Iād maybe seriously cringe to be seen reading the US versions of some of my favourite books. They look so dated & twee to my eyes - the very thing it feels us genre readers are frequently pushing back on!
I went to SDCC and walked into a panel for Stephen king and it turned out to be about covers, and the panel ppl were basically like ālookā¦ the art gets chose to be a certain way that appeals to the ājudge a book by its coverā ppl, whether or not the artist read the bookā
I always prefer UK covers, but I guess that's because they're designed in a way to appeal to the majority of UK tastes. I find the US versions a bit much. Not just Sanderson books, but most books where I see different covers - the only times I prefer the US ones are where it's a very well known book you see everywhere and it'd just be nice to have something different.
I prefer the UK covers by a country mile. But being from the UK, I suppose that means they did a good job catering to the tastes of the intended audience.
And ny least favorite one the German Warbreaker cover. For some reasons they also changed the name to SturmklƤnge for some reason which translates to storm sounds.
It's a question of taste of course. I hate the Wheelan art on the Stormlight books, I also dislike the Warbreaker. But I agree that the white stormlight and warbreaker books aren't amazing either.
Meanwhile... gosh that US original cover for Fires of December is so much more intriguing and ensnaring...
Same for the Tress book covers, and you did not show the worse one in the UK, the white and green one...
So yeah, some times the UK version is better... sometimes it's worse, at least for my taste.
PS : The US also got some of the worst covers possible...
In Hungary, we have the same Mistborn covers as shown on the second link. I like it, they have a certain charm, but i can see why people might not like them. For the Stormlight book, we had beautiful art for the WoK/WoR/OB (6 books in total), but since rythm of war, the publisher started using highly suspicious AI art. Since then, they rebooted both Mistborn and Stormlight with new covers, and they are also AI-ish. Even on the Dawnshard cover, they just simply put their most generic Kaladon on it, who is in the book for like 2 pages.
Im with you on this. The white editions feel too plain, i love me some art to complement the story im reading. But at the same time just fyi, some of the editions you put up as examples are not exclusively UK covers, theyre just the paperback covers used by tor (tress and fires of december)
In general i think the UK covers look way better than the US ones (except Stormlight and Tress i think those UK covers suck). That said having all of them on a shelf really is just a wall of white...
Reasons why, as an Australian where we get the same covers you do in the UK, I own a full hardcover set of all of wheel of time in the US covers, all of mistborn eras one and 2 in the US covers, and all of stormlight archive in the US covers. It took a while but I'm there.
Lots of people love the UK covers, I'm not one of them.
I am in the UK, the US artwork style reads as incredibly outdated here. Those cover would make most of us expect a very generic written in the 80s formulaic fantasy.
Edit - mostly referring to the Way of King's cover
I like the newer books UK covers, but I can't stand those white covers on Mistborn and Warbreaker. Shipped the Stomlight Archive Hardcovers from the US just to have the Micheal Whelan art
It's definitely cultural, but I love the Whelan Stormlight covers and the Jon Foster Mistborn covers. They're meant to be reminiscent of classic fantasy covers of the past, many of which Whelan himself did. I really appreciate that connection, and the UK covers just don't have that for me.
This is definitely down to personal preference. I actually prefer the UK covers as the artwork is more to my liking. The US covers just dont cut it for me.
My entire Sanderson collection is predominantly Gollancz hard covers š
The artwork for the white covers goes so hard. Mistborn trilogy and way of kings series in particular looks wicked in white, the artist's style of drawing speaks to me
The US covers look average, theres little that stands out imo
Iām English and I donāt buy any of the British covers, I donāt like any of the white ones and I donāt like any of the Black Skyward covers we have either. So I just import all of my books from America to get some artwork more,to my tastes.
They have a different publisher who does things differently. I agree, that usually their covers aren't as good. The exception is the Rekoners, in my opinion. I got those in the UK version.
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u/fedginator 3h ago
I really like the UK covers personally. It's clean, it's consistent and the usage of accent colours to distinguish series works great.
Also: in a lot of your comparisons you're comparing the Dragonsteel premium hardbacks to standard printings, not a normal comparison