5.12.2010

International book covers are ridiculous

What possible discussions took place in Germany, for instance, when publishers first received the manuscript for Martin Amis's House of Meetings – a novel that describes the misery of life in a Russian gulag – and set to work on a cover that featured six figures body-popping in the windows of a modern apartment block? What prompted Italian book designers to give junior wizard Harry Potter a hat shaped like a mouse, and why did the French opt against the monochrome design that jacketed Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated in the UK and the US, concocting instead a watercolour of somebody fondling a woman's breasts?
These are super fair questions! What is up with some of these international covers?

1 comment:

  1. It's a strange phenomenon in picture books as well. A lot of the work I do is with the UK and Europe. Their art style is just so different. They put covers on their books that would NEVER sell state side, yet over there, they do magnificently.

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