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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 11:58 am:   

What have they done to this?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743437497/ref=pe_71010_17078730_pe_vfe_d4

Is that the worst cover ever on a good book?

And instead of "A new introduction by the author", which would be the normal way of saying it, they've put "newly introduced by the Author".

I would not buy that book based on that cover.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.244.154
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:01 pm:   

You're right! And look at Pet Sematary!

http://www.amazon.com/Pet-Sematary-Stephen-King/dp/0743412281/ref=pd_sim_b_3
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 81.152.74.159
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:15 pm:   

Ugh. Have they also "translated" them to text-speak?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:23 pm:   

They've done it to Salem's Lot as well...

I think the Pet Sematary cover trumps the Shining as worst cover ever!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:24 pm:   

You'd think King would have some control over his book covers by now wouldn't you?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.244.154
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:24 pm:   

Yeah, cos if I'd buried my son and he'd come back as a corpse to murder my wife, I'd shed a tear, too.
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 81.152.74.159
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:53 pm:   

2 L8 shes ded - ono shes not WTF???
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:06 pm:   

Worst covers ever.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:31 pm:   

I wonder, then, if I'm alone in quite liking these covers? There's something of the old pulp paperbacks about them. I guess it's just me ...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:45 pm:   

Another forty authors lost their contracts so that some publicist with squeaky shoes and a flat-top could be paid a hundred thousand dollars to come up with that concept.

Look, the original King covers were pop art. Then they got moody, then they got literary, then they got corporate. Now they're being passed off as graphic novels. If they do well in this format, the publisher will say that proves horror is dead. If they do badly in this format, the publisher will say that proves horror is dead.

Having said that, I think the new cover concept could work quite well for Carrie – which was truly a teen novel with horror elements rather than a horror novel with teen characters. That's not to dismiss it, of course.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:46 pm:   

Caroline, our postings crossed – I was just reacting to the covers!
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:56 pm:   

I have the original Night Shift paperback with the holographic gimmic of the eyes growing out of the hand, which I like a lot. But the first cover for The Shining was no great shakes. Cujo, Christine, Firestarter, Dead Zone were simply puerile.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 82.38.75.85
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 02:38 pm:   

(no problem, Joel - don't worry about it)
OK, I'm going to be controversial here. I'm saying this with my "business management academic / researcher / practitioner" hat on.

It's all about marketing, and if you're involved in the small press - either as a writer, editor or publisher - you've all engaged in marketing, whether you like it or not. When you choose a cover artist/image, choose the quotes and blurb for your book, you're doing this in order to make the book look eye-catching and attract the reader.

King is in the fortunate position of being able to spend money on marketers in order to try to reach different audiences, and that's just what he's doing here. If he can reach a different type of reader by "packaging" his books in a different way, then surely that's a good thing for the horror genre (and reading/writing as a whole) rather than a bad thing? Discuss.
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 217.20.16.180
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 02:38 pm:   

Absolutely horrible, but then so are those pastel monstrosities currently gracing the UK shelves.
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Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts)
Username: Tom_alaerts

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.78.35.185
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 02:45 pm:   

I agree with Caroline.
A well-marketed cover aims for one thing: that you'd pick up the book when browsing in a bookshop between mountains of other choices.
I think that these vaguely Roy Liechtenstein-like covers accomplish that.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 04:32 pm:   

Christ all-bloody-mighty - those covers have got to be a wind-up!!

Inappropriate doesn't even begin to describe it... who the hell is the twat responsible for this? I'd like to give him a good smack - fucking horrible!!!!
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 207.6.255.47
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 08:34 pm:   

Apparently Salem's Lot is published by "Pocket Books" (which is a sub-set of Simon and Shuster). The information for The Shining says it's put out by "Galley", but I've no idea what that's part of as their name is new to me.

I agree with Caroline: marketing is all about shoving your product into the consumer's eye-line, and if this works (which it can't not, frankly), then it's a "good thing"* and to be celebrated. The Lichtenstein influence might be more apparent if the art were technically better, but the style is more akin to that than anything else, and I thank Tom for pointing out what I'd missed initially.

It's wise to remember that the covers of any books we loved as children are by default "the right cover for the book" in our minds, as it's the one we looked upon when we discovered the joys within. Were we to read these novels for the first time with these images, we'd consider these to be "correct". It's all about initial contact, isn't it?

[c.f. Sellar and Yeatman]
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.31
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:04 pm:   

I came up with a better one:

ps
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.31
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:06 pm:   

Whoops - while that one certainly IS better, I actually mean this one:

ps
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:19 pm:   

It's wise to remember that the covers of any books we loved as children are by default "the right cover for the book" in our minds

True! I first discovered Hodgson's "The Voice in the Night" in a sixties Dutch-language Hitchcock paperback with a very appropriate picture on the cover and I've always associated the story with that picture. The impact on my twelve year-old mind was devastating. To this day I can't look at it without feeling the old sense of dread.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 12:14 am:   

I think the problem is, these look like the covers you see on Lulu.com or whatever.

As for the Pet Semetery one, it looks like a pamphlet you'd get in the doctors surgery.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.74
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 07:06 am:   

Much as Craig's cover is a work of genius, I kinda like the pulpy new covers. King's first books were published in the states in paperback without his name on the cover, so he may figure anything with his name on is a bonus.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 10:36 am:   

That is the best thing you've ever put on here Craig!!! fantastic.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 11:12 am:   

The problem with those covers is that they have nothing about them indicative of the grim horrors within - and those are two of King's darkest works. Those covers make them look more like self-regarding teenage angst novels - all bright colours and cartoonish imagery.

Surely the cover image of a novel must say something about the mood and content of the work, to avoid giving out a false impression, or am I not sophisticated enough to get the post-modern cleverness of what they're doing?!?!

Ha! Whoever designed them clearly knows nothing about the horror genre and cares less about doing King's early masterpieces justice - utter balls imho.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.253.221
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 04:07 pm:   

Well, Web/Mark, I'm not sure it's funnier than those actual, inane covers.... Although, Stevie, perhaps it IS sheer genius: the teens will be drawn in, thinking one thing - and get, with two of King's scarier works at least (PET SEMATARY/SHINING) something quite unlike what they might have expected... if they can just GET a teen to read THE SHINING, one of the finest ghost novels of the last century, that would be a good thing, too.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 05:03 pm:   

kraig, how do you spell my name???
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.253.221
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 05:06 pm:   

M-Y, then N-A-M-E.

[cue rimshot]
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 05:09 pm:   

Oh, you were referring to Mark, not me. Ignore that last post.

It's been a hard day, the only reason I knew it was Thursday when I managed to crawl out of bed this morning was because there were two ironed shirts hung up on my wardrobe door.

Ever get the feeling that not only are you burning the candle at both ends, but someone's just set a fire under the middle as well. (swimming 3 week nights before rehearsals and on a sunday lunch time, Ju Jitsu on the other two weeknights, random visits to the gym when I can manage it and various St John events I've put my name down for - last weekend I never changed out of my St John uniform except for when I went for a swim)

I think I need to slow down. I'm not getting out of bed on saturday until I absolutely have to for hygeine reasons.
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 207.6.255.47
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 07:45 pm:   


quote:

I'm not getting out of bed on saturday until I absolutely have to for hygeine reasons.


Cue title card saying "Monday Morning…"
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Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 09:40 pm:   

These look like some lame version of Print-On-Demand covers. Thank goodness there are plenty of original hardcover and paperbacks available at your local used book store.

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