Comments on: Judging a book by its cover

By: Alison

Alison — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:29:31 +0000

I LOVE the concept of the Twilight-ified Wuthering Heights covers. The fact that this has got so many teens actually out reading this series.. just because it was mentioned by Bella! Wow! Just goes to prove the power of the written word.
I do think it’s rather funny about the Anne Rice covers though – I bet there’s a whole lot of teens coming home going “Mum/Dad, I just found this GREAT book, nothing like this was ever out in YOUR day, you just don’t understand what teens want” (or am I being cynical again?)

Covers are important – and they should reflect the content. I do understand the idea that creating a cover based around another titles popularity will hopefully make those readers pick up the new book.. but it does annoy me when the new book is nothing remotly like the cover suggests.

By: Kaia

Kaia — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:53:28 +0000

Wow. I’m kind of horrified by the Wuthering Heights covers. I do love the Leviathan cover, I was sad when I ordered mine online and got the old UK cover, this one:

http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/2009/05/uk-leviathan-cover/

Which is not to say that the illustrations aren’t amazing, but the US version is so amazing. New UK cover is rumoured to be closer to that one…

By: fablecroft

fablecroft — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:23:25 +0000

I laughed so hard when I saw the Twilight-ed Anne Rice covers – I mean, Anne Rice was totally the vampire QUEEN until Stephenie Meyer came and sparkled it up…

By: Tansy Rayner Roberts

Tansy Rayner Roberts — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:14:12 +0000

I really like the sound of “one of the hottest fantasy novels of the year”, gotta say…

This is a really cool round up. Also, I love Rowena’s covers so very much.

By: Nyssa

Nyssa — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:15:39 +0000

HarperCollins may be trading in on the tween generation getting Wuthering Heights because of Twilight, but I feel that it’s a very cheap trick to change the cover like that. I literally shuddered when I first saw it!

I’m not into the whole idea of the ‘hooded men’ on covers fad, every second new book at stores seems to have the exact same style. The whole point of a cover is to stand out, like Power and Majesty and Leviathan, not look like everything else. Also the shot of a neck with blood on it is very much overdone. Receiving a package of new books, I thought I’d gotten the exact same book I already had, the cover looked so similar! But it turns out it was by a completely different author.

I wish for more original art on books. There are probably as many fabulous artists as there are wondrous authors out there. Let the book shine for its differences, not for shallow similarities that’s made up a publicist somewhere, gambling on whatever is ‘hot’ at the moment.

And yes, I do love the World’s Next Door cover, too