{"id":24781,"date":"2018-03-06T07:30:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T12:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24781"},"modified":"2018-03-06T07:30:18","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T12:30:18","slug":"cover-story-the-ups-and-downs-of-redesigned-book-jackets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24781","title":{"rendered":"Cover Story: The Ups and Downs of Redesigned Book Jackets"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the ways publishers can breathe new life into older titles is to redesign their covers. This can be a boon, especially if the cover images are seriously outdated, unappealing, or inaccurately represent their contents\u2014or even if a series has just seen a diminished audience and needs a kicky introduction to a new crowd.
\nSome recent redesigns that seem promising include Candlewick’s relaunch of the Judy Moody jackets;\u00a0the older ones\u00a0are perfectly delightful and kid-appealing, and the new ones are snazzy and even likelier to draw kids’ eyes:
\nOriginal cover of the first Judy Moody title:
\n
\nNew cover:
\n
\nOne of the secrets here is that everything Peter H. Reynolds does is guaranteed to be visually appealing. Even though my adult eyes prefer the\u00a0original cover a bit, I completely get the desire to jazz up the series with a redesign that will entice a new generation of young readers, and think the tiger stripes and punched-up colors of the whole series\u00a0could\u00a0do the trick.
\nI also noticed that\u00a0Tundra Books\u00a0is bringing back some of L.M. Montgomery’s less well-known books.\u00a0While I confess I can’t picture the original covers of\u00a0The Story Girl\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0The Golden Road,\u00a0<\/i>I do find these\u00a0<\/i>new luminous ones pretty:
\n\u00a0\u00a0
\nSometimes, however, when jackets are redesigned, their new coats don’t serve their contents well. This can be true even when the art itself is appealing, if the new image doesn’t convey what lies at the heart of a book’s appeal. For instance, the wonderful thing about Gerald Morris’s sparkling Squire’s Tales series is their\u00a0irresistible\u00a0great humor; they bring Arthurian legends alive without sacrificing literary faithfulness. That’s a huge feat. I’ve never met a family\u00a0that took a chance on the first book\u00a0who didn’t devour and absolutely LOVE the whole series, often as a whole family read-aloud. These books are fantastic and should have a huge readership. We were always able to handsell boatloads of the first title when it looked like this:
\n
\nThat cover not only captured the Arthurian ethos, but it was funny. Bing bang boom. Somewhere along the line, however, the publisher decided to go in a different direction,\u00a0going full-on Arthurian and losing all of the suggestion of humor:\u00a0\u00a0
\nThis book, and therefore the series, is a much harder handsell now. It’s not that the cover art and design aren’t attractive, but they\u00a0are a mismatch for the delightful mischievous brightness inside the covers. This jacket sadly\u00a0turns away the very readers who would adore these books.
\nOne of the most heartbreaking\u00a0redesigns of recent years\u2014and I\u00a0apologize for hurting some feelings by saying it\u2014was the decision to replace the\u00a0covers of Edward Eager’s seven timeless magic books. Half Magic<\/em> had long been\u00a0one of the easiest handsells in the history of bookselling, both with the N.M. Bodecker cover art:
\n
\nand with the Quentin Blake reboot:
\n
\nBut the new cover tanked our sales. We\u00a0used to sell 20 copies of this book a year without even trying, which isn’t bad for a decades-old backlist title in a small store\u00a0in a town of 5,000. Then the new cover happened, and we are lucky to sell five:
\n
\nYou would not believe the\u00a0machinations I now have to resort to in order to move copies of this book. I have to hide the cover while I booktalk it, EVEN WITH GROWNUPS. Even when potential readers love the booktalk, once they see the cover, they balk. I have to flip through the\u00a0pages to show\u00a0the (stiill-intact inside) Bodecker illustrations’\u00a0whimsy and child appeal. I encourage them\u00a0to just read the first few pages, knowing that if they do, they’ll be hooked, but\u00a0I often can’t get them that far. It’s not that the cover art couldn’t do justice to another book\u2014it’s not badly designed, though the characters’\u00a0expressions are rather alarming and the color scheme (across the whole series) is awfully brown-orange\u2014honestly, I could see readers gravitating toward this book if the story\u00a0inside matched the cover: brawling knights in disarray. But it doesn’t. The readers for this cover are not the same readers as the ones who want Half Magic,\u00a0<\/em>and I think every bookseller I know would have been able to warn the publisher that this would be the case.
\nBy the way, I have no idea if the sales of the series have changed dramatically since the redesign, but I have strong suspicions that if they have, the direction is not up. I hope the publisher will correct me here in the comments if I’m wrong. I just know what has happened in my own store. But I\u00a0did check\u00a0in with some booksellers across the country to see if they, too, struggled with these new Edward Eager covers, and\u00a0found my own frustrations echoed.
\nIt seems to me that publishers could avoid some disappointments and\u00a0expense if they ran some of their cover designs by seasoned children’s booksellers. After all, we have spent eight hours a day, every day over the course of years, observing children’s and parents’ reactions to book covers. We notice their changing tastes and preferences, and we have first-hand knowledge of the books they flock to and those they\u00a0wouldn’t pick up if you bribed them. Because customers are spending their hard-earned money on books, they are picky about them. And they are really picky about the cover art. I’ve had customers buy books *solely* because of a beautiful jacket design (cf: The Hazel Wood<\/em>, which happily also happens to be a fantastic read), and I’ve had customers refuse books they actually believe they would like just because of a poor cover.
\nFor years, I’ve been hoping publishers would\u00a0engage a panel of half a dozen or so seasoned booksellers\u00a0with a mix of regional and cultural diversity who would be willing to give a thumbs-up or down to their book covers. I understand why they haven’t done it; doing anything that involves feedback by committee adds an extra step and a layer of hassle. But if you heard six experienced booksellers from all areas of the country tell you, “I won’t be able to sell this book with that cover,” it might be worth listening to.
\nReaders, are there any recent book jacket reboots you love? Hate? Want to marry?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a reboot is just the thing. Sometimes it… really isn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}