Hello and Welcome!

Red House Books is going through a bit of a update!

I've always had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted this space to be but I've been detoured from my path by...lots and lost of other people's opinions and ways of doing things...

I'm committed to this little chunk of the interweb but I've also branched out into other places so! Now it's time to think of Red House Books as more of a hub of all things me! And Me is a hell of a lot of book love!

Stay tuned!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday, May 28, 2012

Double Take


Noticed this today!


On the left is the US hardcover edition of Saundra Mitchell's The Vespertine which came out last March from Harcourt Children's.


On the right is the Australian paperback edition of The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter which released in April 2011 from Harlequin Teen.

I would love to see the process by which book covers are designed and made. Especially in this case since these 2 released so close to each other. Don't you think people would check to see if an image had already been used elsewhere? Do you think this model knew her picture would be on the cover of not 1 but 2 books? Is it even an actual picture or was it computer generated?


I personally though the cut off head was a little strange on The Vespertine cover when I first saw it but after seeing the complete image, I don't know that I like it any better.


What do you guys think?

5 comments:

  1. I agree with Juju. This REALLY bothers me!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I detest it as well!! It's very frustrating & typically causes me to buy multiple versions of the same book. Quite aggravating!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh no, that's terrible! But I guess if you're going to buy an image for a book cover, you would run the risk of this happening? The company/artist that owns the image might not know what its being used for when the rights are sold, and with millions of books out there you can't check them all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I tend to think that the majority of YA books, particularly those with a female protagonist, have rather blase covers. They usually involved an image of some girl dressed in a provocative or colorful dress, with a serious expression on her face. The images don't usually tell us much about the story at all and could be interchanged and no one would care. Seeing these two covers confirms my suspicions that in too many cases generic images are plucked from hyperspace and slapped on a book. I prefer cover images that are really unique, speak to the story itself, and make a book stand out from the crowd. Some of my favorite YA covers of late include Ashes, Fracture and Article 5.

    ReplyDelete



Thanks a bunch for visiting :)