Book Covers: Us vs. UK

lemonhead101

15 years ago

Found this article comparing book covers for the publication of books in the US and the UK...

Doesn't really explain why the difference, but interesting to see anyway...

Here is a link that might be useful: Judging books by their covers...

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Comments (9)

vickitg
15 years ago
Very interesting. And people make the strangest comments in the thread below the piece. But comment threads are frequently like that.
annpan
15 years ago
I don't think I notice the artwork on the cover of a book very much, especially if it is too elaborate. Also sometimes it gives away a vital pointer of the plot. A Mary Stewart mystery I have has the denouement pictured! Whose idea was that?!!!
The characters are sometimes not even similar to their book descriptions.
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I have to respectfully disagree with the analogy of a book group discussion and someone asking for advice IRL. Book clubs are meant to encourage lively debate. If a friend showed me a picture IRL and said "I love this look - how would you go about creating it?" I would not give my opinion on the idea - she told me she loved it - what purpose does it serve for me to tell her I think it makes it look like she isn't a reader or that it looks contrived? I think it is far easier for people to voice opinions and disregard feelings when a question is posed online. THe OP expressed her own love for a certain look and a few other posters felt compelled to tell her the reasons it was a bad idea - why? I think it is unkind and unnecessary and represents a lack of concern for other people's POV. I often do things that are outside the box so I am used to people at least raising their eyebrows a bit at my choices at times - but I could care less. It just seemed obvious in the response from the OP that she was influenced by other people's opinions about her taste and it made her question herself. That bothered me.
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Russ, I think men can write "girl books." Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar is very much a girl book, I think. While I know they are not great literature, a number of Gothic suspense novels have been written by male writers under feminine pseudonyms -- I guess the thinking of the publishers was women prefer to read Gothics by what they think are women writers, which I think in the case of most female readers is bosh. A number of female writers have written quite effectively in the traditionally male bastion of war stories. Olivia Manning's recounting of the Battle of El Alamein in The Levant Trilogy is every bit as good as any male writer's, and Pat Barker's The Regeneration Trilogy is much lauded by both male and female readers. However, whatever the inroads female writers have made, I'm afraid that there's a certain segment of male readers who will pass over their books simply because they are females. An androgynous name, such as Barker's, has probably pulled in some unsuspecting male readers. As for the classics you mentioned, Russ: Tolstoy's and Flaubert's books -- even when their protagonists are women -- are more likely to be read by men than Jane Austen's novels are. Anyanka has already talked above about this disinclination of boys and men. I know present male company is excepted, but it's hard to say it's untrue of male readers in general.
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I lived in the South for many, many years. Houses there tended to get interior and exterior facelifts with some regularity. Not wholesale changes on the exterior, but perhaps a new copper-roofed porch cover, or new hardscaping, or newer, larger windows, or a mortar wash on the brick. Landscaping is well kept, lush. If someone buys a house with old, overgrown, leggy landscaping, chances are it gets torn out and new installed. There’s very much a pride in presentation in the South. Four+ years ago I moved to the Southwest. It’s entirely different here. Some of it is cultural, with old-school walled yards. Some of it is a desire to be cognizant of water scarcity. But some of it is just a different, live-and-let-live attitude. There’s just not so much keeping up with the Joneses here. I went on a local garden tour last spring. There were two small houses with lush, owner-maintained landscaping. Just wonderful. But they likely wouldn’t have made the list back in Birmingham - not awe-inspiring enough. The larger homes on larger lots really didn’t have extensive landscaping or attention paid to the exteriors. A few didn’t even seem like they belonged on a garden tour. They were nice ca 1980s/1990s homes, but hadn’t been updated at all on the exterior. But I’ll bet the kitchens and baths inside were sparkling and new.
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Carolyn, thanks for reminding me. On gothic covers, it is all about the house! Then there is the one lighted window -- it has to be a high window, at least on a top floor but preferably in a turret if there is one. The funniest cover I've ever seen shows the typical 'young thing' (this time clad in a costume that looked straight from Star Trek) fleeing from a house . . . no, wait! Is it a house or a rocket ship? There's an obligatory light high up in the nose cone if the rocket ship was standing upright. I'll never give a spoiler, however. Actually, I don't remember what the cover was meaning to convey. Speaking of cliched covers: In the 1950s and '60s, my father enjoyed hard-boiled detective books (e.g. Mickey Spillane and Erle Stanley Gardner) and thrillers, such as those by Ian Fleming. He kept them up on a high shelf in his closet. However, I had big eyes and readily observed the main tropes: usually a man with a gun -- always fully clothed -- and a scantily attired or naked woman with strategically placed bits to suggest her most alluring features. I asked my father why the men had clothes on but the women did not. My mother overheard this uncomfortable exchange and said that she had to smother her laughter over daddy's disconcerted explanation. To think, though, the same men who thought the covers of books aimed primarily at men existed with good reason, but bodice-ripper covers because they were aimed at women were abominations. Oh well! The double standard still exists, but it seems to be watered down nowadays.
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yoyobon_gw
15 years ago
I have to admit that I am attracted to a book that has a fascinating cover design...or a design which is lovely.
I would hope that the design has something to do with the story and tempts the reader to pick it up and read the blurb.

The MAISIE DOBBS ( forgive me for mentioned her constantly but I am in the midst of the whole series , first to last !) original covers are very attractive. Done somewhat starkly, they resemble vintage travel posters from perhaps the art deco period ( or do I have that incorrect?).
They fit the time frame of the stories perfectly.

The covers which I dislike are those "burning loins" romance novel covers with someone ravishing (or is that ravaging) someone , causing bodices to pop under the strain of all that passion!
Now there's a piece of fiction for you. LOL.
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
I dislike the current "headless woman" trend.
carolyn_ky
15 years ago
Yoyobon, we could have a new saying here at RP: "Well, pop my bodice!"
donnamira
15 years ago
I pay attention to cover art - I have even bought multiple copies of the same book, just to get the different cover art. And there are some books I've refused to buy because the cover art puts me off so much! I'm a sucker for all McKillip's recent books with the Kinuko Craft covers and was so disappointed that her Solstice Wood had a different cover, that I never bothered getting it. yoyobon, I also admire the Maisie Dobbs covers very much, partly for matching the style to the period setting.

I hadn't noticed the headless woman trend until someone here mentioned it a few months ago; now I laugh every time I see another one.
pammyfay
15 years ago
There might have been a conversation about this specific book here before-- I recall reading about the different covers for "The Help." The British version has 2 black nannies standing over the little white child in her stroller; the U.S. version has 3 birds sitting on a perch. I can't recall why the U.S. branch of the publishing company decided it shouldn't hint at the racial angle of the book on the cover...
yoyobon_gw
15 years ago
Carolyn.....let's go!

" He was a real bodice-popper !"
carolyn_ky
15 years ago
I like it! Sounds like Rhett Butler to me. Or maybe Colin Firth. (I'm too old for this stuff.)

Book Covers: Us vs. UK

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vickitg

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