Rick Kleiffel of The Agony Column has a longish post today on cover art, starting by talking about The Name of the Wind and running on from there. As usual with such complaints, he seems to assume that he is the target audience for Big Fat Fantasy, and there he goes wrong. (Kleffel is also a bit factually incorrect: there are two covers at retail for The Name of the Wind, and he shows both of them. The one he likes is actually a small detail of the one he doesn't like, blown up.)

I know the SF intelligentsia doesn’t like the usual look of epic fantasy covers; they complain about it at every turn. A lot of editors feel that look is tacky, as well – that’s why they keep trying different things: to find a reasonable replacement. But guess what? Those covers sell books, because the general fantasy audience likes to see a picture of a fantasy scene on the books they buy. It may seem frightfully down-market, but readers do know what they like, and they buy it when they see it…

(The other blog which has been talking about cover art a lot recently is Neth Space, where I disagree some and agree some – that cover for The Bonehunters in particular doesn’t look right to me. I don’t think you can put a stagecoach on an epic fantasy cover and have it look right, even if there is one in the book; stagecoaches just make people think of Westerns, and that's not what you want for epic fantasy.)