Same Book, Different Cover

Good News Everyone!



You just totally read that in his voice.

 

 

Dusted is getting a revamp.

 

It's been nagging at me for a while now. There are all these little things, like spelling errors, adding to the legalese on the inside of the book (don't want anyone thinking it was based on true events, nope, not at all...), extras, and the description.

 

Though it wasn't until recently that I considered doing all of these in a single thing. It started with the thought of the cover, inspired by reading a little bit of H.P. Mallory's Publishing How-To Book, and went from there.

 

 

Dusted, I'll admit, has a pretty bland cover. When setting it up against covers within the same genre I realized fades terribly into the background. There's no focus point, no color wheel reference, nothing. Expect news about it in the future.

Until then, I'm here to talk about covers.

Most of what I've mentioned about covers either mention how to put them together or else pointing out several books that have the same cover today I'm going to talk about the opposite of the second one, the same book, but with several different covers. I'm going to use the first Maximum Ride book as an example because it's evolved a lot over the years.

 

  

Here's the original cover for Maximum Ride, and the one that grabbed me right from the beginning (hint: it was the wings). It's not trying too hard, really. But it was also published back in 2005, before the whole Vampire Teen Angst Explosion that hit about 2007 (in 2005 it was a time for Young Teen Adventure, as we were flying high with Harry Potter) This one was for the hardback as well as the mass market paperback that came out a year later.

This was the first redesign, and published as a trade paperback, the most teen-friendly format for books. It's got action (heck it looks like a scene from a comic book) and the tagline "You've gotta soar to survive."

Same tagline, new look. The girl is now the focus on the cover (as we're not fully into Vampire Teen Angst Explosion of which covers are prominently girl's faces) and the wings are toned down.

When Max: A Maximum Ride Novel (derp) was published in 2009, I think this redesign was chosen to match the new look of the series. It looks more geared toward the adult market, hoping to appeal to James Patterson readers rather than YA readers.

And, finally, the final cover that matched the last three books starting with Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel (another derp). New tagline ("Meet Max. Welcome to her nightmare") and full-on angst-girl face on cover.

In fact, here's a lovely compilation of covers that I found while looking for the above ones.

It should give you an idea of the evolution of the rest of the covers (although they are out of order) and how the market for covers has changed over the course of 5-7 years, as well as the change depending upon the audience they are trying to grab.