Along the lines of Ten Cents a Dance in terms of a downgrade in cover design between the hard cover and the paper back is one of my other favorite reads in the past year, The Adoration of Jenna Fox.

This is the hardcover:

It’s intriguing and leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination. You have no idea what the story will be about, and for this book in particular, this is important. Readers who go in with an idea of the book won’t get the pleasure of unraveling the mystery.

But then, there’s the paperback:

Now, we have a picture of Jenna. And you know what? It ruins the story. Although the cover really doesn’t tell the story, readers go in with an idea or readers who go in blind and find out what happens will ultimately see this as a disservice. I think it looks like a lot of other covers and, well, it doesn’t draw me in as a reader as much as the hard cover — even the colors are gone!

Which do you like better? If you’ve read it, what do you think about the decision to add a person to the paperback? How about that big spoiler?

I have to give credit to Bookshelves of Doom for this one.

One of my favorite books this year and perhaps in a very long time has been Christine Fletcher’s Ten Cents a Dance. It’s set in 1940s Chicago and follows Ruby as she becomes a taxi dancer to make money to move her family up in the world. It’s beautifully rich, with a great plot, great characters, and a fantastic setting and era. Here’s the cover:

Perfect! It captures a sense of time and place, and it doesn’t give you too much in terms of what the story’s about so that as a reader, you can make your own images.

Well, as has been a trend for a while now, the publisher has decided to change the cover for the paperback of this book. This is the paperback cover:

I’m really, really disappointed in this one. First, it kills any sense of time. Second, the male character there? He’s not in the story. And really, groping on the front cover? I don’t think this looks like a 17-year-old in 1940s Chicago at all. In fact, this books like every other book out recently set in contemporary times. It reminds me a lot of many of Simone Elkeles’s paperbacks.

I think this is a mistake — it’s now going to have a harder time finding its audience, who may be turned off immediately by a cover that not only looks like so many others on the market, but also because it doesn’t convey that it’s a historical fiction that’s not filled with boys groping girls (Ruby would actually be quite offended, I think!). Although I don’t require my books to give me anything on the cover, when a cover is such a success because it DOES capture the essence of the story, it’s disheartening to see that discarded for something generic.

What do you think? Have you seen any other hard cover to paper back cover changes that have made you cringe?

Remember this double take of two books not even published yet? Alea pointed out that the publisher’s changed the cover now because of it. Here’s the new one:

Kind of interesting, seeing how the two takes on the same cover are radically different. I’m not sure which I like better nor am I sure which one fits better. They’re so different!