Wait >> there are tons of people, depending on the income of this (and a lot more) book(s)?

OK, if you are from Europe – there had been a change in currency, some years ago. In Germany we went from “Mark” to €uro at an exchange rate from 2:1 roughly.
You would expect to see prices turn lower by 50%, roughly?
Nope, most goods that had been sold at 25 “Marks” were on display now for 25 €uro. Most notably books had been among those!

What I mean – your explanation of the thoughts behind working out this cover do not differ from any design work for any consumer object. What you want to do is sell this product.
Nothing wrong about that, but what reads like you are on a quest for the good of your readers – well, I bought this book, sporting this cover, and it will take me hours to get the picture of that woman out of my mind, exchanging it with the one that Mr. Abercrombie describes.
Maybe I should purchase hard covers – there you can get rid of the paper cover (turn it around, put it back on – BINGO!! ),

The cover was eyecatching and seemed, at least to me, to convey that I was in for an adventure instead of urban fantasy.

My wife has never read fantasy in her life… She loved the cover, so if you can get her to pick up the book, think about reading it. I think you are doing your job.

Also in no way is this cover missleading, if you look at a cover and expect something other then what it is, you are judgeing it buy it’s cover and have fooled yourself.

Great book/Great cover… Good job.

On a side note, I was happy to read the description of how the cover came to be. I’m also female and I love me some epic fantasy and the idea of having a dark and flawed female lead is too exciting to pass up.

Can’t wait!

It was good seeing the thought process though and I do quite like the mixed cover, it’s defiantly better than the earlier options that were posted. Will it be int eh nice parchment effect? or glossy? (I think that glossy will look a little tacky but…)

This seems to be a general thing I have noticed though. US covers for fantasy books tend to look a lot more tacky than for the UK edition. I guess it’s the market segment thing. It is as though the target audience for the US is teenagers while in the UK it is across a larger segment of the population. There are books I have picked up from the US that I have thought looks like a quick time wasting read based on the cover that I only chose as there wasn’t anything else and I have been very pleasantly surprised once I looked inside.

I know the old adage is ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ but let’s face it we do and getting it right is very important.

I do have a question concerning the final image. How did you decide what proportion of the cover be given to the map versus the character? Based on market? Image balance? Slide rule?

But from a design standpoint, I do think the cover is now far too busy and does not track well to the eyes. In my opinion, Orbit has had some fantastic covers, and in general I’ve loved the visual identity you’ve created. But in this case I see a failure, and can’t help wondering if, by trying to please everyone, you’re now pleasing no one?

Admittedly, you quite obviously know the best way to interest new readers into picking up the books. Although it seems almost as though you are attempting to create a stereotypical urban fantasy cover, in the hopes of getting the women (who supposedly all quite enjoy those covers) to pick the book up, but what happens when they read it. What if they expected an urban fantasy due to the cover? They could be sorely disappointed in the book. Of course, they would most likely enjoy the book nonetheless (because his books are quite good), but it seems to me almost like tricking them into reading the book. Again though, I suppose that is half of what advertising is, heh.

If I had not read the previous books by Joe, I would probably have passed it by without a second thought. Instead, I may resign to the inevitable fact that I might have to pay some extra money to get the cover I enjoy more.