special experiments in hottie book covers

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you've seen the lit hottie du jour, i take it:

http://www.geocities.com/speaknyc2001/marisha.jpg

it is the author's photo that has launched a thousand gushing reviews.

but have you seen the difference in her book covers?

the u.k. one sez "ello, i iz a byatt fan and i like to look at luverly pen and ink drawrings at teh national gallery of pwetty fwowers"

http://www.penguincatalogue.co.uk/image.cache?titleId=2256&fw=200

whereas the u.s. one sez "i like me some snazzamataz! hubba hubba! wanna buy a duck!"

http://www.pastemagazine.com/images/articles/3184_image_1.jpg

so how exactly do they make these choices? just curious. i kinda wanna read it, but i don't want to spend 25 smackers. it's all about books! i love books that are all about books!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 15:53 (nineteen years ago)

i do wanna buy a duck

― john cougar thornton melloncamp (dubplatestyle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 15:54 (nineteen years ago)

Does she actually write about physics?

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

there is chapter on Shimura Curves, no?

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:00 (nineteen years ago)

masturbation and authors photos

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:00 (nineteen years ago)

oh the uk one is so superior

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:05 (nineteen years ago)

You think so? I vastly prefer the US one. See, maybe that's why they made that choice.

Also, I had it from a reliable source that the book is pretty good, too.

― always crashing in other people's cars (kenan), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:07 (nineteen years ago)

I just bought this, I'm a sucker for 'coming of age stories' and didn't even know the author was hott.

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:10 (nineteen years ago)

but im merican

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:21 (nineteen years ago)

The American cover definitely more enticing.

― Sam: Screwed and Chopped (Molly Jones), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:26 (nineteen years ago)

I like US cover better too. Besides, there are hundreds of books with covers like the UK one, only dozens like the US one.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

the us compartmentalized nifty fifties thing is so dorkly annoying and literal

the uk one is all sexy, bold, pagehuggingness intrigue

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/community/commentary_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002235171

― always crashing in other people's cars (kenan), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:28 (nineteen years ago)

So far as I know, this stuff is decided in the same way as any branding-type decision, which is what it is: people talk in vague marketing terms about what sort of jacket a book should have, except that instead of corporate marketing terms, like "more edgy," they mostly have to refer to other books or types of books, like "more of a McSweeney's look" or "the jacket should really scream 'chick-lit'"; then a designer puts together concepts and marketing and publicists and editors and publishers all have exactly the kind of conversations you'd expect about them ("it should be more commercial" / "this looks too feminine for this audience" / "but it just does't look like an FSG book" / etc.), and if the author's lucky, one of those people is actually getting and sticking up for his or her input in the decision. I mean, like any packaging, you can look at a book's design and get a sense of what kind of book it's meant to be (or what kind of book its publishers want it to be, anyway) -- chick-lit looks different from thrillers, new literary fiction looks different from classics, etc. -- so it'll be pretty much the standard decisions about what kind of book a cover seems like it'll have behind it.

E.g., the UK cover for this looks (somewhat intentionally, I presume) like a 1960s romantic paperback, and it really honestly isn't the kind of cover a brower for literary fiction in a US chainstore is likely to focus in on. Whereas the US version is fairly standard look for entertaining/enjoyable new lit-fic -- it had a very small lean toward the McSweeney's aesthetic, really -- so it's a safer bet.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.penguincatalogue.co.uk/image.cache?titleId=2256&fw=200 http://blog.yam.com/PlasticOno/088fc8c0.jpg

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:31 (nineteen years ago)

Very bad book with jacket design that certainly catches one's eye:

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060882352.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V63575320_.jpg

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

(Can anyone please tell me what this book is actually about?)

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

i'm also enjoying the friction btw physics and the girly painting

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:34 (nineteen years ago)

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060882352.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V63575320_.jpg http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1594200513.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:34 (nineteen years ago)

Pessl's stunning debut is an elaborate construction modeled after the syllabus of a college literature course—36 chapters are named after everything from Othello to Paradise Lost to The Big Sleep—that culminates with a final exam. It comes as no surprise, then, that teen narrator Blue Van Meer, the daughter of an itinerant academic, has an impressive vocabulary and a knack for esoteric citation that makes Salinger's Seymour Glass look like a dunce. Following the mysterious death of her butterfly-obsessed mother, Blue and her father, Gareth, embark, in another nod to Nabokov, on a tour of picturesque college towns, never staying anyplace longer than a semester. This doesn't bode well for Blue's social life, but when the Van Meers settle in Stockton, N.C., for the entirety of Blue's senior year, she befriends—sort of—a group of eccentric geniuses (referred to by their classmates as the Bluebloods) and their ringleader, film studies teacher Hannah Schneider. As Blue becomes enmeshed with Hannah and the Bluebloods, the novel becomes a murder mystery so intricately plotted that, after absorbing the late-chapter revelations, readers will be tempted to start again at the beginning in order to watch the tiny clues fall into place. Like its intriguing main characters, this novel is many things at once—it's a campy, knowing take on the themes that made The Secret History and Prep such massive bestsellers, a wry sendup of most of the Western canon and, most importantly, a sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity.

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

Whereas the US version is fairly standard look for entertaining/enjoyable new lit-fic -- it had a very small lean toward the McSweeney's aesthetic, really -- so it's a safer bet.

This is kind of OTM. I look at that cover, and I immediately think Hornby or Chabon.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

Coming of age story plus Veronica Mars plus reference to "The Secret History" (which wasn't as debauched as I had hoped) = sure, why not I'll give it a chance.

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:36 (nineteen years ago)

Oh, that sounds dull.

http://www.canvasmag.co.uk/images/reviews/bookcover_blink.jpg

...was really eyecatching.

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:37 (nineteen years ago)

I like the trade paperback covers of Philip Kerr's Berlin trilogy

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0142004146.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V55788831_.jpg

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:43 (nineteen years ago)

That Blink = the amount of text on it says "hello, I'm non-fiction," but the title font says "no, I'm not hard or anything -- look at my stylish design and stuff!"

That Kerr = they've kinda lifted their own design scheme from those Penguin portable editions, haven't they? It looks nice -- makes a book seem important, too.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:45 (nineteen years ago)

It was more that it was blue and sparkly and swirly.

― Angel In Love With Her Own Pedals (kate), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:46 (nineteen years ago)

MILO Z IVE BEEN REPPING FOR THOSE BOOKS FOR YEARS, YOU HAVE READ THEM?

― gear (gear), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:47 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, nabisco is right about the "McSweeney's look," which I sometimes think of as the "Chip Kidd/Chris Ware-lite look."

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

They don't look like the Penguin Portables to me - those are nice, but it's just an image on smooth stock over top of a black field with the title and author.

Which publishing house just came with a bunch of reissues that have comic book/graphic novel style covers? I saw a display at Barnes and Noble recently. There was a Paul Auster and a Dorothy Parker collection and some others that I don't recall.

xp - I just finished March Violets last night. Pretty good, though the end was a little whoa and it's definitely "100% British Guy writing about Nazi Germany." I'm going to order the other two today.

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0143039539.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V62043047_.jpg

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:52 (nineteen years ago)

I am curious about those Kerr books, but I thought A Philosophical Investigation started well and then ran out of gas. So if I didn't really like that one, am I gonna like these?

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:53 (nineteen years ago)

http://us.penguinclassics.com/static/covers/all/7/8/9780143039587H.jpg

xp March Violets was a very straightforward detective noir, ala Chandler or Hammett, but less subversive (becuse the system the PI is chafing against is so fucked, he's not as out there as Marlowe or Continental Op)

― milo z (mlp), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:55 (nineteen years ago)

i wish i never learned to read

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:56 (nineteen years ago)

xpost:
Has anybody read any of those detective stories written by a Canadian set in Occupied France? The atmosphere is really well done, really creepy, but it's kind of hard to figure out exactly what's going on sometimes.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:58 (nineteen years ago)

plus reference to "The Secret History" (which wasn't as debauched as I had hoped)

No incest? Pfft. Why bother?

― always crashing in other people's cars (kenan), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

the u.s. version of pessl's book reminds me of a lot of 80's "hip" book covers. that 50's atomic age snazziness kinda thing. anyway, what i find interesting is that it really looks like they are going for completely different audiences. u.s.: younger, hipper, edgier. u.k.: older, more serious, etc. i'm wondering if this happens a lot. i don't always SEE the differences in covers. um, mostly cuz i never leave my home.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:06 (nineteen years ago)

tell me more about these occupied france books.

each novel in the berlin noir trilogy is just a shade darker than the previous. i like the cover of the three novels packaged together, too:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0140231706.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

― gear (gear), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:22 (nineteen years ago)

I got a free copy of Special Topics ... at a library conference in July. I have yet to read it.

In all honesty, I picked it up because of its snazzy (American) cover.

― molly d (mollyd), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:27 (nineteen years ago)

"Has anybody read any of those detective stories written by a Canadian set in Occupied France?"

is it the series where the french policeman and the german gestapo guy solve crimes? i have one of those but i haven't gotten to it yet. but that might not be the same guy.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:29 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, I read, what? Salamander and Sandman ... each one is titled after the press nickname of the mysterious perverted killer. Great atmosphere, yeah, but the plots are a little sloggy.

― Paul Eater (eater), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

ok anybody saying the us cover is all hipster litdork signifiers & the uk one is some kinda dowdy grocery store harlequin deal has no understanding of how marketing & design work now - uk cover is EXACTLY what some pomo mcsweeneys kid browsing for new fiction is gonna wanna see, while the us one looks like 1 of those hip christian books from the late 90s (could easily keep the graphics & replace the text w/ like 'generation x-ian : a teen's guide to keeping it real while staying true to god') - that kinda earnest non-kitsch appropiation of genuinely beautiful non-modernist design (mostly ignored in the 90s for ugly shit like the 2nd cover) has been a cornerstone of the whole 00s hipster aesthetic & to think that anybody interested in 'a wry sendup of most of the Western canon and, most importantly, a sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity' would pass it by as looking too corny or square is ridiculous

― and what (ooo), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:50 (nineteen years ago)

guess maybe 5 1/2 years ago would need to slap some ivory helvetica on the pretty pretty flowers but then-- 9/11

― and what (ooo), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 17:52 (nineteen years ago)

uk cover is EXACTLY what some pomo mcsweeneys kid browsing for new fiction is gonna wanna see

Actually I think you're missing part of how marketing works, which is that things like this aren't aimed at the actual cutting edge of their audience, but rather at what the bulk of people (who may be a year or two behind, bless them) will interpret as signifying that cutting edge.

Also I don't entirely agree about the UK cover -- the current McSweeney's aesthetic is bright and kind of cartooned at this point, but the fact remains that people still like their "serious" fiction to look a bit dark and blocky and utilitarian, just like their glasses and/or messenger bags. I don't know that floral / 60s-paperback is quite in there yet.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 18:28 (nineteen years ago)

Which is to say that actual "pomo McSweeney's kids" aren't really the important end of the buying audience on these things, but rather just ... readers.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

dude the us one looks like 90s graphics for that cutesy food network show about like visiting candy factories & 50s diners & stuff - i think mcsweeneys unsleek non-retro (like uh ren faire 'freakfolk' & indie costume dramas) has been kicking the ass of the bullshit atomic age stuff for longer than you think, enough that the bulk of people feeling shit dont fall for cadillac fins & overt ikeaisms

― and what (ooo), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 18:44 (nineteen years ago)

The only place I'm seeing those things is on niche publications (like McSwy's-related books themselves), which might be the symbolic market for these things, but aren't the real market. (In the same way urban black men might be the symbolic market for rap, but suburban white kids are the actual ones.)

It's not the 50s-isms of the US cover that are pointing it toward our market (those are just kinda lame design elements), but the spareness, blockiness, and darkness of it, which are how US books announce "here be literary fiction."

By way of comparison, here's the UK cover of the last David Mitchell book, which looks in U.S. terms a bit like the kind of literate sci-fi novel people would read in middle school:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0340822791.02._PE34_OU02_SCMZZZZZZZ_V54655708_.jpg

Note what's done to make the U.S. version look like the type of book that will be a Booker prize finalist:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/1400063795.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

My point is that jackets that seem a bit ... florid ... don't get interpreted in the US as high lit, I don't think, so people play it safer with the small text and blocks -- and this is exactly why lots of McSwy's-type things lately have been indulging in these really lavish comic-booky designs, as a way of acting livelier and more vibrant than all that. (But those things are still a niche!)

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:13 (nineteen years ago)

well thats what i meant by joking that 5 yrs ago you would put helvetica on the flowers (or similar modernist font cf this) but now i feel like the covers for serious fiction are basically indiana jones wild cards & the low-key blocky shit you mention is more for attempts at non-gladwell pop econ/pol stuff or slow kids pretending to write serious fiction (fair description of mcsweeneys lol)

― and what (ooo), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:22 (nineteen years ago)

at least we're past every title/author name being in self-deprecating lowercase

― and what (ooo), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:23 (nineteen years ago)

I didn't read the design properly on this cover so I thought the author was putting only his last name on the cover, in un-self-deprecating UPPERCASE.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:32 (nineteen years ago)

There's a little literate sci-fi in the UK design of Black Swan Green, but there's also a bit of a sleek chill-out nightclub look to it -- the kind of chic graphic design that produces Lavalife ads. But your point is taken, N., that this is at odds with what Americans expect out of lit-fic.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:33 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, Paul, Sandman was the book I was talking about.

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 19:40 (nineteen years ago)

the uk one doesn't look 1960s, it looks more 1860s

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 21:47 (nineteen years ago)

You know, it's just occurred to me that we might be comparing cloth jackets to paper covers -- both the Pessl and the Mitchell UK designs on here are things that would look appropriate on a paperback but less so on a hardcover. (Things that might look busy or florid on a hardcover, what with the size and the wraparound jacket, can look a lot more interesting and sedate on a paperback.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 14 September 2006 00:02 (nineteen years ago)

Whoops, turns out no: both the Pessl and Mitchell on here are cloth.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 14 September 2006 00:03 (nineteen years ago)

sooooo awesome. so i'm trying to think of 80's covers that mimic the 50's (can we all agree its a good thing that stock photos of the nuclear family of the 50's is almost a thing of the past for book covers AND album covers?) and it made me think of Tim O'Brien's atypical (for him at the time) book The Nuclear Age which used some sorta soviet-looking woodcut of a guy digging on the cover. anyway, check out the u.k. cover. total sci-fi! and the french version is total flaubert or something. anyway:

http://www.illyria.com/tob/tob_covna.html

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 14 September 2006 02:25 (nineteen years ago)

the flower cover makes more and more sense if you think about pessl sounding a little like pistil which is a very very sexy flower part. could work well on the subconscious.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 14 September 2006 02:31 (nineteen years ago)

one more thing before i go:

"Marisha is an actor, writer and dancer. While studying english and creative writing at Columbia University, she appeared in various productions in New York City, the most unusual being a surreal adaptation of Edward Albee's Lolita, in which she appeared as a mechanical doll."

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 14 September 2006 02:32 (nineteen years ago)

And she's an Americorps volunteer too and has done several internships, right?

― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, 14 September 2006 02:36 (nineteen years ago)

Marisha Marchant

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 14 September 2006 03:57 (nineteen years ago)

i love how sensitive some of you are to the shifting trends in book cover design!!! i spent 1/2 of the time at my press job chatting with the designer about font choices.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 14 September 2006 04:11 (nineteen years ago)

the US cover is good in this case; in general though, uk publishing houses DESPAIR of their american sisters in this dept.

― a rapper singing about hos and bitches and money (Enrique), Thursday, 14 September 2006 07:46 (nineteen years ago)

The novel itself is truly bizarre, the first half is one thing but the second half is in a whole other world.

― milo z (mlp), Monday, 25 September 2006 03:23 (nineteen years ago)

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