September 10th, 2009

Filed under:
Books
7 Comments »

Those Are Some Cynical Book Covers

I was in a bookstore at Pearson Airport today. I was just killing time, and I noticed the usual display of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels with their stark black covers and gothic fonts. Er, hang on. I looked a little closer:

Very Similar Covers

They’re an entirely different set of vampire werewolf novels by Kelley Armstrong. Is it me, or do those books look a little too much like the Twilight covers? Here’s the cover of Eclipse, the third Twilight novel, for comparison:

Cover of Twilight Book

Right down to the wide kerning (or is that tracking? I never know) on the author’s name, eh? Doesn’t the design of Ms. Armstrong’s book covers seem like an incredibly cynical attempt to trade on Twilight’s success?

Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 7 Responses so far

donna
September 10th, 2009
7:38 pm

aw, man. they totally do. Which sucks, because Kelley Armstrong’s books are WAY better. bah!

[Reply]

donna
September 10th, 2009
7:38 pm

(also, the original covers are much better.)

[Reply]

Michael Buckbee
September 10th, 2009
8:08 pm

It’s one thing when it’s a “new style” book that is trying to get in on the craze, but check out this copy of Wuthering Heights:

http://www.theawl.com/2009/08/old-book-gets-fresh-vampirey-makeover

I’m just going to start placing bleeding flowers on a black background on anything that I want to sell.

[Reply]

Jason Landry
September 10th, 2009
8:34 pm

That’s tracking. And it’s obviously inspired by Twilight. I imagine the publisher requested this new look and the designer probably felt guilty doing it.

To be fair though, the 2002 edition of Bitten (which pre-dates Twilight) used red on black as well: http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780770429096

[Reply]

Derek K. Miller
September 10th, 2009
8:39 pm

And if the change sells a bunch of copies, I’m sure the author and publisher and store will be happy.

I think the same thing has happened with the look of movies. Ever since the Lord of the Rings films popularized the grey, Mistes Of Olde Tyme™ appearance (applied as a sort of digital “wash” to every frame, and emerging from a similar look in The Matrix), it seems no action-adventure film, from Harry Potter to The Chronicles of Narnia to Wolverine to Underworld, can appear anything but the same.

If Speed Racer hadn’t sucked so much, I would have admired it for at least being willing to use colour.

[Reply]

Wandering Coyote
September 11th, 2009
1:05 pm

They also share publishers: both are published in the UK by Little, Brown, & Co. In Canada, Random House publishes Kelley Armstrong’s books and Meyer’s audio books. Not a coincidence!

[Reply]

VancityAllie
September 21st, 2009
2:01 pm

Yup, along with every other teen book cover. The Wuthering Heights link posted above is a perfect example.

It’s no surprise that every kind of media is trying to piggyback off Twilight’s success… the revamped (no pun intended) book covers, the new teen vampire TV series popping up everywhere… the vampire MMO games advertising on every Twilight site.

*sigh*

[Reply]

Add a comment