Is it just me, or are the covers of fantasy books become much darker, more serious, and sometimes, more business-like than before? I've noticed this while replacing paper books with e-book versions...
Sword of Shannara:
Old,
new,
newer
Ship of Magic:
Old,
new
Memories of ice:
Old,
new
Is it coincidence that I'm just noticing this with my particular books, or is there some sort of effort to try and rid the fantasy genre of its stigma?
(The
stigma, which is: I've often encountered people that were of the opinion that Fantasy is something only read by children, and that adults "don't read that", mainly because it's "not literature", and "cheesy". If you do, you're some sort of a nerd who got stuck in his mid-teens or something.)