The cover design process is long and involved. And, as the good people at the Wheeler Centre recently noted, readers do like to engage in the time-honoured sport of
judging books by their covers.
There are so many questions that have to be answered in a cover-design brief.
- What is the book about?
- What is the genre?
- Who is the market for this book?
- What is the tenor of the book?
- What do the characters look like?
- What competing books are already out there?
- Does it need to stand out, or blend in?
These questions are the same no matter where you are in the world. If you
are making books, you are asking these questions.
Which is why it's so fascinating to see that there are so many
different answers...
Next month we are publishing a B-format edition of Gordon Reece's fabulous
thriller Mice.
It looks like this:
It looks like this:
When we first published Mice in 2010 it looked like this:
These are both fabulous covers, and you can see the relationship between
them, even though they are so different - somehow you can *feel* the book in both
these covers.
And in some weird way, we think we can feel the same link between all these
VASTLY different covers from around the world. It's kind of cool to think that
designers and editors all over the globe, speaking many different languages, are
responding to the essence of Gordon's book.
Germany
Czech Republic (Adult edition)
Czech Republic (YA edition)
UK (Original edition)
UK (new YA edition)
UK (new adult edition)
France
Spain
Norway
USA
Brazil
(It's hard to show in a photo but OMG DIE-CUT MOUSEHOLE!)
Poland
The Netherlands
Italy
Which one tempts you?
PSST There is also a Chinese and a Hungarian edition, but our google skills are failing us. If anyone finds a cover for either, please send us a link.
3 comments:
The new cover doesn't give any indication to me that its a psychological thriller though it does let me know the protagonist is YA
The second cover screams thriller but not YA so much.
I think I like the Netherlands cover best, based on the blurb and my expectations
Shellyrae - interesting observations! Thank you.
We were aiming for a more traditionally YA feel with the second cover, so it's pleasing that it comes across that way.
Ooooh I love the UK original and the Spanish one - the house really stayed with me after reading this novel, so perhaps that's party why these appeal so much to me personally. I think I love the Spanish one best. Also LOVE the Italian one simply because it's so moody and gorgeous... So fun comparing all the covers like this!
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