Ready for another batch of hardcover books seeing a face lift in their paperback form? I swear my list of cover changes grows every time I make one of these posts, too. Alas, here are a handful to take note of. I don’t think there are any bad changes this time, but there are a couple that kind of seem like they’re going after the same thing.

Daniel Kraus’s The Monster Variations has a bit of a killer hardcover look (on the left). I love how you can only make out the shadow of a person in the background, and the way that shadow looms over the entire cover gives the right kind of haunting vibe. Then there’s the car and the headlights in the middle of the shadow guy’s chest — but it’s not just the car and headlights that are noteworthy. It’s the smoke that’s kind of billowing out of the top. I think the deep purple background, which is a little sketchy in and of itself, adds to the dark vibe of the cover. But maybe the thing that works most for me on this cover is the font for the title and the author. I love how thin and jagged it is. I think this cover has pretty great appeal and it gives off just the right tone to the reader about what to expect.

That said, the paperback iteration? It’s not too shabby, either. It takes some of the same elements of the first cover and tweaks them. But rather than one looming guy on the cover, this time we get the shadows of three boys who are walking either toward or away from a pair of headlights. It’s got a dark and gloomy color to it, as well, though the font for the title and the placement has changed quite a bit. But you know what’s neat? It STILL gives off the same tone with the font and how tightly packed together the letters are. It’s interesting, though, how much smaller Kraus’s name became in the paperback edition than it is on the hardcover. Oh, and did you note the addition of a blurb on the front of the paperback from Lauren Myracle?

I’d say both covers work pretty well and have good appeal to a wide range of readers. If I were picking one up, I’d probably go for the hardcover, but I think that’s because it looks just a little bit creepier (and I think it’s a tiny bit more memorable visually). The Monster Variations came out in paperback at the end of October.

Can this hardcover to paperback change for Katherine Longshore’s Gilt get a huge high five? I think this is an excellent change over, especially because the hardcover is so bad. I don’t need to talk too much about what makes it bad — maybe it’s the closeup shot of the girl’s nose? Or the fact she looks dead? Or the fact it makes this historical fiction novel look like a paranormal kind of story with how pale and, well, dead the girl looks? Also, do we need to see up her nose?

The paperback version though gets at the romance and I think it gets at the fact this is a historical romance quite well. I mean, there’s no doubt the girl is quite enjoying that kiss (though if you look too quickly or you are stuck on the fact the hardcover looks like a dead girl, it could look like a guy who is getting a little vampiric on her neck). I’m not usually a huge fan of tag lines, but I think this one — “The price of desire could be her life . . . and the crown” — only adds to the feel of the novel. It’s like this cover gets who the readership of this book is. It’s kind of nice to see the color in this, too; I love that it has a golden tone throughout because that only furthers the tone of a story about royalty. Bonus is that I think this cover has great adult cross-over appeal, as well. This cover is sensual without being outright sexy.

I think it’s neat they kept the title font the same on both and the positioning of the title is identical. The author’s name placement on the bottom for the paperback works a little better for me, too, but I think that might be because it’s in a new color and that color is enhanced by the colors in the image itself. Hands down, the paperback edition of Gilt (due out in May) is a winner. I would wait to buy this book for a collection until May because that cover has much more appeal, particularly for those readers who love historical romance stories, than the nose shot hardcover.

I think I’ve talked about how this book was categorized as taking place in Mississippi on that infographic about books set in the US recently, even though 95% of the book actually takes place in Iowa. It still bothers me because I think the fact it’s set in Iowa is pretty important plot point. Alas.

The hardcover of Jacqueline Woodson’s Beneath a Meth Moon is incredibly simple and poignent because of that. I love how the green is done with the same effect as Kraus’s hardcover above. In this version, I like how the edges are darker than the center, too (we can get metaphoric here if you want to, but I don’t need to lay that out there). The title placement and font are minimalist, though the second “o” in Moon certainly conveys the drug use. This cover is stark and yet it nails home the story quite well. Personally, this is a cover I’d pick up; however, I have a feeling because of how little it tells visually without an actual image, it might be a harder sell to browsers, especially teens.

It’s an interesting shift to the paperback, which now not only has an image, but it’s also a fairly minimalist one. There is a clear sense of despair and challenge with it, given not just the crumbling brick wall, but the way the girl is positioned and in the way the image itself is sketched. It’s imperfect. I dig the use of the light blue color to enhance Woodson’s name, as well as parts of the title. Included on the paperback cover, too, are a nice blurb from the Los Angeles Times, as well as a small listing of Woodson’s honors as a writer.

Now it’s been a while since I’ve read this book, but something I’m kind of wondering about the image in terms of the content — I can’t remember if there is ever a moment in the book where we learn about Laurel’s ethnicity. It’s possible there is, though I don’t remember that being the case. It’s not important to the book itself, but it makes me wonder about the girl on the cover of this book. Is she ambiguous in terms of race? I feel like an argument could be made for that case, and the reason I bring this up is because that would be awesome. It’s a story about drug use, and I love how the cover could further the notion that drug problems aren’t relegated to any type of person (which is what I think Woodson is getting at in the book).

Both covers work for me for different reasons. The paperback edition of Beneath a Meth Moon will be available in February.

Here’s an interesting — and I think positive — change for Annabel Monaghan’s recently-released A Girl Named Digit. The hardcover on the left is fun, lighthearted, and bright. But the problem I have with it is that I think the girl looks really young. I think there is a lot of aging up on YA covers, in that a lot of the models are definitely on the upper range of teenage, if they’re not 20-somethings made to look younger. But this cover, I think the model looks really young, and while that would appeal to a younger reading demographic, I think it detracts older teens from wanting to pick it up. This is hurt by the fact she’s labeled a girl in the title (which is a young term) and the fact her outfit also reads really young.

The paperback, though? I love it. I love how it’s orange and black, which will stand out on a bookshelf because it’s so different. I love that even if it is a stock image, it’s been worked enough to look more like a sketch than a picture. The girl in this image looks much more like an average teen-on-a-book-cover in terms of age, and I feel like her expression is much more teen, too. Since we can’t see what she’s wearing, that only helps. I’m also feeling the way the cover font and title work: I like how it’s all capital letters except for the “i”s. It’s just a little effect and a little different, but it makes the title pop. It’s neat how both covers incorporated digits into the design, keeping the books tied together.

A Girl Named Digit will be out in paperback in May.

Last, here’s a huge change. A huge one. And while I think from the perspective of selling the book it’s a major improvement, from a design and eye-catching perspective, I think it’s a downgrade. On the left is the hardcover for Michaela MacColl’s Prisoners in the Palace, which was subtitled “A Novel of Intrigue and Romance.” I love how it’s like newsprint mixed with a painting. It’s so different, and it’s super bright. It stands out on a shelf. But because of the styling, it looks young. I get the vibe of it being a historical novel but I don’t know if from a reader’s perspective that’s so obvious. It’s pretty gutsy not to have the book’s title on the front, too, I think. But this is the kind of cover you have to see the entire jacket to to understand the effect, so I suggest checking it out. I think what I like most about this cover is that it does not follow any trends in design. It’s unique.

The paperback of McColl’s Prisoners in the Palace will be released in April, and it is much more along the lines of other young adult books in terms of style. It makes use of a stock image of what I presume is a teen girl (it’s hard to tell, of course), and it does so with the sort of golden light that gives the book an aged/historical tone to it. Note that in the paperback edition, the bit about this being a novel of intrigue and romance is no longer part of the title, but it’s instead used more like a burb. I’m not a huge fan of the font choice for the title — it feels a little bit showtime or even a little bit big top for me, but I do think it might situate the book’s content in an era. This isn’t the kind of memorable cover that the hardback is, but it might have more teen appeal.

And is it me, or can you spot a potential nice read alike for MacColl’s book from another paperback edition in this post? I think there is a lot of potential ability to do reader’s advisory by good cover design, and this might be a good example of that.

What do you think? Any of these do it better than another? Am I way off? Have you seen any cover changes lately that have really hit or missed the mark?

I told someone recently I keep a list of books that have had cover changes when they’ve gone from their initial hardcover printings. Although there have been a number of changes in just the last three years I’ve been blogging, there seems to be an even greater number of cover swaps in the last year or so. Even more interesting to me than the cover changes are the pair of books here that got both cover changes and title changes.

Eileen Cook’s Unraveling Isobel (reviewed here by Kim) is getting a cover change that I’m a little bit torn about.  I think the hardcover stands out quite a bit: the color is bright and vibrant, and I like the use of the leafy swirls from the font through the entire image. The cover fits the story quite well, though I find the Photoshopping of the model’s crotch area to be really disturbing (you can’t see it so well in the digital images but it’s visible in the physical copies). This is ultimately a story about mental illness, and I feel like the cover subtly hints at this.

However, one of the things I remember about this book was that there is a notable romance. While it didn’t necessarily work for me, I noted that that would be the sell for many teen readers. The paperback cover knocks it out of the park then, in terms of making it clear there is romance in Cook’s novel. Maybe what I find most interesting, though, is the treatment of title and author in the switch from the hard to paper covers: in the hardcover, the title takes up much more space than the author’s name, whereas in the paperback, the author’s name has much more prominence than the title. In fact, the title almost gets a little lost in the image itself. And although the image is fairly generic, it fits the story.

I don’t know if one cover is better than the other; rather, they seem to appeal to two entirely different readerships. The hardcover seems to appeal to those looking for a non-romantic thriller (which is how the flap copy reads, despite a blurb that calls the book sexy) and the paperback seems to appeal to those looking for a story with romance. The paperback edition of Unraveling Isobel will be available in October.
  

I read John Cusick’s Girl Parts a couple of years ago and was pretty put off by the cover. It’s a story about a boy who suffers from a mental illness whose parents choose to purchase him a companion bot in order to help him deal with the challenges arising from his illness. The companion doll, however, happens to fall for a different boy completely. So while the cover makes sense, there are a couple of problems: first, it’s unabashedly packaging a girl for consumption and the title doesn’t help a whole lot, either. Neither do the stickers on her body that call her “fragile.” Obviously, these make sense because the story is about a companion bot, but the use of a live model rubs me all sorts of wrong. The other problem I have with this cover is that, while this book has strong appeal for male readers, the cover won’t sell it to them. It’s a pretty girl.

The paperback, though, does this book a huge favor while still getting to what the story’s about. The girl is finally gone, and instead, we only have the image of bubble wrap. It’s entirely neutral, which gives it wide reader appeal. The title font is the same as the hardcover, and it works because it gets at the robotic element to the story. One of the big additions to the paperback cover is the tag line, which reads “Can a custom-made girl-bot fill a boy’s needs?” Rather than use the girl on the cover, the tag line does an effective (and much less wince-inducing) job of showing what the book is about. I like this rendition of the cover much better, even if the “fragile” sticker still rubs me wrong — it makes sense, of course, but any time fragile is applied to a book about a girl without agency, I can’t help myself. Girl Parts is available in paperback now. 

Technically, this is a paperback to paperback cover change, rather than a hardcover to paperback switch. You can check out the hardcover edition here (and I’ll say I much prefer both versions of the paperback to the hardcover which bothers me not because it’s risque but because it’s so blank and empty). Although I haven’t read Doing It, I’m pretty familiar with the content of the book, and I think that the original paperback cover on the left hits all the right notes for me. It is awkward. I love that we only get to see the guy and the girl from the waist down, and I think so much it said in the way the guy’s hand lays on the girl’s lap. I also think there’s a lot implied in the way the guy and the girl have their legs in the image. The only thing I don’t care a lot for in the original paperback cover is that it’s a little dark. The colors bleed together a bit: the people blend into the furniture which blends into the background, too. It’s just the title and author that stand out because of their bright color and center-stage placement.

The new paperback — available now — definitely gets rid of the color blending issue. This cover is bright. Despite being remarkably similar to the original paperback cover, the changes are interesting ones. The floor isn’t carpet anymore and the couch isn’t floral but an orange-red. Maybe most noteworthy, though, is that the girl in the image is no longer wearing anything on her legs. They’re bare, and the boy is no longer placing his hand tentatively on her thigh; he’s running it along her leg. His foot is also rubbing against hers. There’s an interesting contrast in the body language between the new paperback and the original, in that the tentativeness and awkwardness of the first seems to have disappeared in the second. Instead, it’s been replaced with more comfort in the situation, at least in the guy’s positioning. The girl in the image still has a hesitance in her body language. I like how the title and author name are treated in this cover, and I think it’s interesting they’ve added a tag line to the newer version: “Everyone’s thinking about it, but are they . . .”

I can’t say I prefer one of the paperback covers better than the other, but I wish I could take elements of the first and combine them with elements of the second to make the perfect version of this cover. I’d love to take the body language of the first and mash it up with the setting of the second. 

I read Mary Jane Beaufrand’s book as The River a couple of years ago, and the mystery woven within the frame of the story of la llorona kept me hooked. It’s also a book I’ve talked to teens and they’ve been drawn to it for the same reasons. For me, the original cover and original title of the book work. I love how there’s so little to it: it’s a few wisps of hair, an image of the water, and the tag line that implies the story is a mystery: “What dark secrets does the river hold?” The colors in the cover work, too. I love the light/dark juxtaposition, as it further alludes to the mystery. What doesn’t work for me is a little thing, and that’s the blurry title font and treatment (it’s less noticeable digitally). Worth noting is that the title is much bigger than the author’s name, which is tiny and shoved in the bottom corner of the cover. It’s a little lost. If there’s something worth noting about the original cover, though, it’s that it looks much more like an adult novel than a YA novel.

This book not only gets a new look in paperback, it gets an entirely new title: Dark River. While this doesn’t sound like a huge change, it is a pretty big one. Even bigger, I think, than the image on the cover being swapped. I always think about cover changes as a librarian, and I can’t help but wonder if the title change will lead to a lot of confusion. I foresee some duplicate purchasing of this book, and I foresee frustration about cataloging in the event of duplicate purchases. That said, I think the new title is a better fit for the story and a better fit for the YA market. The image on the cover of the girl underwater explains it perfectly. I think it’s interesting to note that the title treatment is stronger than in the original hardcover, and the author’s name is much bigger and bolder, right at the top of the book, rather than hidden in the corner. Note, too, the change in the tagline for the story: “What deadly secrets does the river hold?” As a whole, this cover looks much more than a traditional mystery to me than the original. Dark River is available now as a paperback.

I read and raved about Janet Ruth Young’s The Babysitter Murders last year. I don’t think the book got a whole lot of attention, which is part of why I suspect this one is getting a major makeover. The original cover stands out to me because it is so different from most other YA books. The image is really straightforward and there’s little going on in the background. The title is allowed to stand out, and the title sort of indicates what’s going on in the image (the babysitter is there with her charge). What’s sort of uncomfortable about the cover is that this happy picture is then set against the notion of this book being about murder. The font for the title and for the author are also bright and happy. It’s a bizarre contrast, but more than that, the cover looks very much like an adult book cover to me. There’s nothing about it that seems like it would appeal to teens. Even though it stands out, I don’t know if it does so in a way that would reach teens.

Young’s book is not only getting a new cover in paperback, it’s getting an entirely new title: Things I Shouldn’t Think (available in November). Let me start with the easy part, which is the new cover itself. I don’t think it does any favors for the book at all. It’s the same generic girl face with her hair over her eye and nose that seems to be on so many paperback covers, and her expression tells us nothing. In the first cover, the happy image is uncomfortable because of the title, but that uncomfortable feeling works because that’s what the story is ultimately aiming to do to the reader. This one misses so many marks and does little for the book since it looks like everything else out there. As for the title change, though, I am a huge fan. Things I Shouldn’t Think gets right to the heart of the story, which is about a girl struggling with the “C” side of having OCD. What she thinks is what she shouldn’t be thinking. The Babysitter Murders is a tiny bit misleading and I would go so far as to say potentially a spoiler in and of itself. But as much as I like the title change, I dislike the treatment on the cover. I don’t like that it’s not capitalized nor that it’s on a strip of black above the girl’s face. And like the original cover, it’s interesting to note that the author name is tiny, at the bottom, and hard to spot.

Something else worth mentioning about this book’s change is the flap copy. Here’s the original, and here’s the updated version. The first talks around the OCD, while the second hits it head on and uses it as a selling point. I think the second does the book a huge favor in that hitting the mental illness aspect of the book will sell it to readers (which is good, since the new cover is doing no favors). I’m not sure either of these covers are getting the book to the right readers, but I do think the new title is an improvement. Thanks to Courtney for pointing this change out to me.

What are your thoughts? Any of these covers doing it better as a paperback than in a hardcover? What about the title makeovers?