Author 'pokes fun' at his book's cover art, which didn't sit well with the illustrator

Authors, maybe don't be mean to your cover artist.

Fantasy author Terry Goodkind has just released his novel Shroud of Eternity, but seemingly wasn't too satisfied about the cover. So he ran a competition, giving away signed copies of the books in exchange for people's thoughts on it.

"Shroud of Eternity is a great book with a very bad cover. Laughably bad. So let's have some fun with it," he wrote on Facebook last Friday.

Not so impressed was the illustrator of the book's cover, Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, who responded to Goodkind's Facebook post.

"It was nice working with you Terry. What you are doing is totally disrespectful. As if I didn’t create those covers accorded to exactly what I was told to do," Lecouffe-Deharme commented.

"In my entire career I have never seen an author behaving like that."

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Other illustrators and writers on Twitter vented their fury at the "unprofessional" post.

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On Saturday, Goodkind responded to the furore by saying he was only "poking fun at my own book."

He added that he wanted to make a point about his publisher and how it chose cover art that's a "poor representation of characters within the book."

"In no way do I feel the quality of the art is rendered poorly. For any misunderstanding, I apologize to the artist, his friends, and of course my own community here ... My dissatisfaction with the art isn't the artist's fault, of course; the art was commissioned and directed by the publisher," he wrote on Facebook.

For Lecouffe-Deharme, the damage appears to be done.

"This person attacked me, and I said my part. I remained correct all the way in front of this despicable behavior," he responded on Facebook. "The rest of the story will unfold privately, between adults, as it should have been the case from the start."

Mashable has contacted Tor Books for comment.