The Official Website of Piers Anthony and Xanth
A couple bits of news today. One is that we now have a cover for Knicklepede Knight! You should see it on the front page (with a link to the publisher) and it is included it below. It will be released on May 26th.
The other main one is that as of yesterday Piers is 10,000 words into Xanth 53 and making great progress.
I’m happy he’s doing well and I’m glad a new book is coming out.
I don’t want this to sound like a complaint, because it’s just a sharing of my opinon. Everyone has one and you’re free to ignore mine. This cover isn’t it. It looks like someone snapped a picture of two college kids, signing a consent form to be in the same safe space together.
I loved the old painted fantasy covers. I’m not as in love with, but okay with the faux leather looking ones. This one just looks like a new author who can’t afford cover art, so pays someone on fiver to do it.
Again, I’m not trying to be mean. I’m trying to let you know how I feel about it. What vibe it gives off. I know I’ve passed on book with covers like this in the past, because they often had writing issues and no editor. I know Pier’s writing will be quality, which is why i’ll purchase the book, but how many others might pass on it, if that’s all they see of it.
Anyway, like I said, just my opinion. Feel free to ignore it. Glad a new book is coming out. Glad Piers is doing well.
To be fair, I think this is a fairly low-budget affair. It’s not like it’s being published by a big name. Additionally, the only people reading this deep into the series are real fans, and if you’ve read almost 50 of these, chances are you won’t be stopping now.
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You’re right that fans won’t stop there, but I feel like something could be done. The generic covers, or even just a fan cover contest. That would let someone get their artwork out there, possibly landing work on other projects.
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I think he’s probably had trouble finding an artist to stay with after the one he was using so long passed away. He was fantastic. RIP Thomas
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I agree with the original poster’s concerns. There has to be a Xanth fan out there who was a fan of Sweet’s fantasy work and was inspired to create similar or nearly on par work to his!
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That’s a solid idea. What does it hurt at this point. Let any fan submit artwork, given the prompt. Pick the one Piers likes best, and contact that person to tweak it to fit elements of the story that might be spoiler. If everyone has bad art, then just do what you want.
Even if you do it once, you could find somone to work with on covers going forward. He gets better artwork and the artist may be trying to break into the field of cover art or other works, and this could be a needed boost to their portfolio.
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These days Piers is mostly focused on his writing, but I will forward this discussion to him and let you know what he has to say. I can understand what you are all saying. As was pointed out, it is a smaller publisher. I also think the trend in general is to cut budgets around covers. At least that’s how it seems to me – most fantasy cover art these days seems like either AI or simple patterns.
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Also, Sweet did great work. I have an art book of his various works.
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I agree with the original poster. The cover has a look and feel of too much reality while I love to step into another world reading these books. So a veil of artwork would be nice instead of generic AI work we see every day everywhere, like all the same shops in the city centres all over the world. It’s like losing identity, uniqueness.
But great news that there will be a new book coming out! Thank you, wishing you all the best with all the hard work.
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Sorry, not a fan of the cover. I take it whoever used to do your covers has gone to the great beyond or worse, is now too expensive? That doesn’t excuse a crappy cover. Your fans deserve better.
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The artist for most of the early Xanth books was Darrell K. Sweet, who (although born the same year as Piers) passed in 2011.
There has been a general trend to move away from painted covers in fantasy (you can just look at the new releases shelf to see it). It’s an unfortunate but inescapable reality for publishing in 2026.
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It would look better with just the title and author name on the book, no imagery. That’s how bad the AI art is.
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Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob (born 6 August 1934) is a bestselling American author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. His works include the Xanth, Incarnations of Immortality, Bio of a Space Tyrant and Geodyssey series as well as dozens of other novels, novellas and short stories. He lives in Los Angeles where he continues to work on future Xanth novels and follow the development of the Split Infinity TV series based on his Apprentice Adept novels.
New Xanth book arrives May 26th!
Hi Piers 
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