Ugly fantasy/SF covers

>>8667858
>I find it extremely difficult to believe that detailed market analysis and costumer feedback points them in this terrible direction. Am I wrong?
Yes

>>8667858
This is very standard stuff. I see garbage like this at the supermarket or places like riteaid all the time.

>>8667858
It's budgets, you turd.

Back in ye olden times they had bad ass covers because that's what the cheapest artists could do (as they had all learned in community colleges at a time when art focused on technical skill through life drawing rather than stacking garbage).
Now we have a generation of digital artists taking every job they can get their hands on.

Fantasy is a niche genre. Most publishers design covers for the books based on what they think the fantasy readership will like, not what the public at large will like. Only if they think the book has mainstream appeal will they give it a cover the public will like (see: A Song of Ice and Fire's various redesigns since the HBO show came out). For the most part though, it goes through fads. Right now is a fad I don't really like though, a tendency to do a simple drawing on a solid white space. No idea what market trend showed that sells.

>>8667858
Fantasy is for the most part written by and for retards, it makes sense they would market it for retards.