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Kirr Mistwelder wrote:

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Ugh - that's my worst fear, a new reader who has the poor luck of picking one of the worst books as their first SW novel. That said, there are good parts of The Crystal Star. The Solo children actually come off well - and I enjoyed Leia finding those 'apprentices' of Vader. The Han/Luke plot however...

Back to Del Rey. I've certainly been mentioning that I also think Del Rey is purposefully making some of these decisions. In the original post, covers are mentioned. If Del Rey is not responsible for the covers on these books, who do you think is? Yes, obviously an artist makes the cover, but ultimately if it's crap, do you think Del Rey would still use it?

So, let's call a duck a duck - Del Rey is responsible for the covers. I think they have recently moved in a direction to try and use iconic images on the covers of hardcover books. Allegiance = Stormtroopers. Death Star = Death Star (and a fairly nice picture of it). Dark Lord = Vader. Millenium Falcon = Millenium Falcon/Star Destroyer. Shadows of Mindor = Luke/X-Wing. Clone Wars = Clone helmet. Some of these examples are nicely done, others not so much. Some of them make sense, others not so much. It's a general trend of a direction I think Del Rey is moving in with it's covers, and I don't particularly like it.

Now just like covers, poor writing is in the eye of the beholder. I liked Invincible. I do think it could have used a good editor going back to Denning and telling him to add some more material at the end. Editor = Del Rey. If you're unhappy with the fact that certain authors get used over and over again - guess who makes that decision? Yup - Del Rey.

LFL itself is not blameless - though they are a little more removed (and running an entire empire, not just the EU lit).

Just a quick FYI on covers; Karen Traviss fought for original covers on her RC novels and managed to win the right to have Greg Bridges, the concept artist for the game, create the original cover for RC: True Colors, she lost the battle to get a similar cover for RC:O66, however.

Every now and then a writer manages to leverage a little bit of input, but book covers have long been a bone of contention with me, especially genre covers, most of which are horrifically mismatched.

The problem is that the art departments insist that "know what sells", so no one, not even editors or the books, can over-rule the art department. Suggestions can be made, but it's the art director that has the final decision, and they create what they think will sell the best based on trends and the genre and current climate.

I have strong feelings on the quality of most genre book covers, and most every author has a horror story to share about getting a horrifically mismatched cover to their book.

I'm not even sure how much sway LFL would have as far as covers go, as the publisher's art department are a law unto themselves.