I first published my trilogy in 2019. They had covers that I had designed from stock photos. I've gone into the reasons why I went to professional cover art in other posts so I won't dwell on that. The main reason is they do look more professional and I want to build a brand 'look' which is important.
This is more about why I choose the type of cover that I do. They are considered scandalous and racy, or people assume they are romance.
I could go into a rant (and I have before) about how a shirtless man does not automatically = sexual in a lot of cultures and how I grew up with my family who lived in the desert and on the beach where a shirtless guy was a common sight and nothing sexual about it. I could also go into the rant about how covers of famous Sword and Sorcery books (like Conan the Barbarian) have shirtless men on their covers as a display of masculinity/strength and there have been shirtless barbarians in fantasy for much longer than Romance got away with having them on their covers (racy romance pictures used to be on the INSIDE cover to hide them). I can also tell you that I grew up on comic books and mythology where this was also depicted often.
But let's break down why I, as an independent author, have chosen this style in particular to display on my books as my brand.
I have loved all things Fantasy my entire life. Growing up on materials mostly marketed to heterosexual men, I have had to deal with more than my fair share of scantily clad women wearing armor that I, as a woman, know is 1. Ridiculous, 2. Exploitive, 3. No sensible warrior woman would ever wear. 4. Looks extremely uncomfortable!
Which I could deal with, fine, as a stylized sort of cover if they had also kept the covers like Conan where the barbarians wear a loincloth because they're good enough fighters they don't need armor. But no. We moved to more and more exposed skin on women and less and less exposed skin on men. I have become more and more disillusioned by fantasy covers produced by mainstream publishing and that has led to me buying less and less books as a reader.
I was told, by many before I published, that I COULD NOT publish fantasy with shirtless men on the cover. That it was reserved only for ROMANCE. This is simply not true, and while yes, romance is now currently dominated by scantily clad men, what happened to my fantasy barbarians? Fantasy had them first.
Then the trend became books with female lead characters to combat sexism (which I do approve of and wholly support strong female characters). However, as a reader personally I find it very hard to connect with most female characters and prefer to read from a male perspective (and I definitely prefer to write as one, I find it a fun challenge to write realistic male characters and it helps me understand them better).
I write what I want to read. Stories about strong PEOPLE (men, women, and all of the LGBTQIA spectrum). I put the covers I want to BUY on my books. Unfortunately, I have discovered not only are attractive shirtless men almost nowhere to be found in fantasy anymore, they're actually discriminated against.
My books do have mild sexual content/steam so as my editor says it is appropriate to indicate that by these sort of covers so young children don't pick them up, because they are definitely not written for children of any age. (Though the sexual content is very mild/fade to black mostly, the horror does not get treated with the same gloves and can be very graphic.)
After this year of heavily promoting and advertising my books I have discovered a few things:
I do have women that will write to me and thank me for doing this sort of cover AND tell me they bought my books for the cover. MANY of them express the same thing I feel, we haven't had representation of this sort of hero on our fantasy and some of us WANT it. We're tired of looking at books marketed for heterosexual men with mostly naked women on the covers.
People will almost always incorrectly assume they are romance even though Conan is widely known and still produced wearing only a loincloth. Barbarian type characters in Fantasy are still widely depicted this way in most things but not on Fantasy Book covers.
Bookstores and libraries WILL discriminate against this sort of cover. (I have had two independent bookstores I really wanted to support tell me to go back to Amazon with my filthy books this year alone).
A lot of people react negatively to a shirtless man (including banning them from fantasy promotions) but they will allow scantily clad women in the same promotion.
Has having this sort of cover hurt my sales? Perhaps. Although, while Cursed Song does indeed have men with shirts on it, it hasn't sold overwhelmingly better than the others and bookstores and libraries are still refusing it (on content now). Ladykiller doesn't sell more than the others in the series really, and while Regret doesn't have that sort of cover the most common response is disappointment that it doesn't.
Why is Cursed Song different anyway? Because the two characters are brothers and everyone thought it would be awkward if they were shirtless. (Again, I find this confusing because I grew up with brothers and there was nothing sexual about them not wearing a shirt but for this one I did go with what the overwhelming opinion of my fans was.)
So the bottom line is, I enjoy them. From talking to people (and not just women) in the communities I have grown up in and want to market to, I know there are others who also want to see this kind of cover. They fit my genre (despite discrimination saying only romance can have shirtless men) and they fit my content because people will assume sexual content whenever a man takes off his shirt apparently. I pay for them, my artist has similar tastes as I do AND she enjoys making these covers for me. While I would love to see other fantasy artists do similar it does come with some risks and a lot of discrimination. My true fans love them and encourage me to keep doing them.
I think the most disappointing thing is when I see other fantasy writers condemning this sort of cover when most of us wouldn't have a popular genre to write in without the likes of Conan The Barbarian.
Yes, my characters are attractive (to some, I grew up on comic books so they do tend to be on the overly muscular side because of that background). Yes, they are usually fit/heavily muscled. As someone who has done research into what kind of musculature you needed to swing the size of swords they prefer (almost all of my characters use large two-handed broadswords -- which is my personal preference in Real Life as well should I use a fantasy weapon) that also factors into my thoughts on how they should be built. An interesting thing to look into is how Henry Cavill had to train differently between Superman and Witcher roles because the sword he used needed different muscles built.
That just happens to be what those particular characters needed to be in their story/world/in my head. I have characters that are not. We will see how Tides of Chaos comes out with it's tiny-person lead character (who is NOT a hobbit or a halfling, just a very short elf, because I have short friends who are quite frustrated they don't get more representation and I can only imagine how little-people feel when they're always some strange fantasy race). Interestingly enough, Sephyrn, who looks much younger/less muscled/more ethereal does not seem to be widely appealing.
So as someone who has tried a few different type of covers, these seem to work best for me, my content, and my hardcore fans. Which is the goal for me. If I had ever wanted to be widely popular and mass produced I would have conformed to traditional publishing. That is not one of my goals (though living comfortably from my writing would be nice.)
Edited to add one more note: Most of my male characters depicted on these covers are bi-sexual. Bi-sexual men are underrepresented (I've been told by many bi-sexual men) and they are definitely not normally depicted as powerful and/or masculine so I also feel that is important.