Fantasy v. Sexy Halloween Costume

The blog Muddy Colors recently featured a fascinating column by Lauren Panepinto, the Creative Director for Orbit Books. In her post, Panepinto discusses the difficulty (and importance!) of achieving attractive, dynamic cover art for fantasy novels. The post includes several NSFW images, but they're important—the author uses them to very effectively illustrate the difference between sexy and sexualized images. As I have repeatedly mentioned, I am intensely irritated by covers like this one*, so it's great to see a publishing house go in a different direction.

*The woman in that image is fighting rabid werewolves. Wouldn't that be the kind of activity you'd want to, I don't know, cover up for?