Consider it more as Luke's essence -- ageless.

Hopefully, even timeless.

Sue,

This year, 2009, sees the anniversary of many EU events and I was wondering whether you (LucasBooks) or the publishers (Del Rey/Dark Horse) are planning to celebrate any of the following with special editions, or other special publications:

Heir to the Empire - 18th Anniversary in June (oft referred to as the birth of the modern EU)
Dark Empire - 18th Anniversary in December
NJO - 10th Anniversary in November
and of course,
The Phantom Menace - 10th Anniversary in May

It's just that nothing's appeared on either your release schedule nor on any of the publishers and neither on major internet booksellers. Perhaps you have something up your sleeve (or maybe it's just that you don't have sleeves)?

Also, for anyone else still in limbo about why the Big Three don't look old enough on the covers...

I believe Sue answered this already when the Outcast cover was released.

Q: the representation of Luke Skywalker looks way too young for his Outcast age

*A: Probably so -- we aged him some, but with the two-color treatment it was difficult -- adding wrinkles and lines would have made his face look like a Sharpe; one of those wrinkley dogs.

Consider it more as Luke's essence -- ageless.*

Right -- we're not able to do this. We have rights only to their likenesses as the characters they played in the movies, not rights to them as their private selves.

Ay, there's the rub. Any artist tasked with aging Luke, Leia or Han would, reasonably, use his real world knowledge of what they actually look like as older people. In fact, if they didn't and aged them to something else, I think that would be even worse than not aging them at all, because I certainly picture older Hamill, Fisher and Ford when reading these novels because I know that's how they'd look. To show me something else and claim it was what they would look like wouldn't be right.

Is it impossible to get permission, at least from those 3 actors, to be allowed to use their future likenesses? Is that something that's been explored before, and been turned down, or deemed too expensive?

Now that I know the reasoning behind the young portraits, I'm fine with it. But I'm still curious if there's anything standing in the way of actually asking them "can we draw you?"

Audio books will have the same covers, correct Sue?

Yes. The only difference is that the SW logo on the audio is not foil and there's no embossing. On the hardcover, both the SW logo and the book title are embossed.

These covers make me wish that a) I was going to purchase the hardcopies instead of the audio...

Now that the audios are unabridged, the hardcovers will be less expensive than the audios.....
However, 9 audio packages face-out on your shelf will look pretty awesome too.

These covers make me wish that a) I was going to purchase the hardcopies instead of the audio... and b) it wouldn't be completely weird to display nine books with covers face-out on my book shelf.
I bet you'll sell a fair number of these books sold from people just walking in the door and seeing them, they really pop (no pun intended) out at you.

By that statement, I'm assuming it's either someone new or someone who's going to shock the living daylights out of us... Can you tell us that much?
But yeah, I'm definitely loving the new art style now. I wasn't big on Outcast; it was a bit too...orange, and I thought the character designs lacked detail in comparison to this. Omen and Abyss are both amazing, though. I think Omen's my favorite.

It's hard to age someone, and we aren't allowed to use the actual actors

I'm curious what you mean by that... clearly since you're still using OT era likenesses of Luke and Leia on covers, you have unlimited rights to those. Probably part of the contracts Hamill, Fisher and Ford originally signed back in 77 or 76. Is there something stopping your cover artists from using a present day picture of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher as a starting point for a future depiction?

*Poor 501st... has to wait for a cover when all it's 2009-Novel friends have gotten theirs. *

I got the feeling Sue was talking about future FOTJ covers, not ALL covers. Either way, I do find it odd that the cover for Abyss has been finalized and released when the next cover, Backlash, apparently hasn't even been conceptualized yet. I suppose there's plenty of time, though.