Guest post by John Grabowski who takes a look at book covers. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover? Well, maybe you should. You can tell a lot from book covers

This guest post came in from writer friend and reader of this blog, John Grabowski. If you enjoyed my earlier post this week (see post here), I think you’ll enjoy this P.S. about additional book covers. Here’s what John had to say:

Here are the various covers to Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland.

The American hardback:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This makes sense. The novel is about Trinidadians who play Cricket in New York parks.

 

Here’s the UK hardback cover:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This doesn’t make sense. There’s no ice skating in this book. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ice skating. WTF?

 

Here’s the UK paperback cover:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This isn’t as “poetic” as #1 but it also makes sense. Much of the story is in working class New York, where the immigrants who play the Cricket live. So this works.

French and German translations. Riffs on the above. The French looks rather poetic. Don’t get the colors in the German one, unless it’s a reference to the Dutch flag, since the protagonist is Dutch. But again, he plays cricket with the Trinidadians. He doesn’t ice skate. Nobody ice skates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American paperback:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which came out around the same time. Hmmm…looks like somebody copied off somebody’s paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And interestingly that you just now brought up the topic of covers, the author of the novel Sideways is blogging right now about what he describes as his harrowing publishing experience. One of the things he complains about is the awful covers they came up with. Here’s the hardback cover, followed by the paperback. The paperback is so bad when I first got the book I thought someone had sent me a pre-release copy with a dust jacket mockup and not the real thing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funny how some covers can be so good while others tell you nothing about the book.

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Thanks John, for adding this P.S. to my earlier post this week. To read more about John and check out his wonderful blog go here.

P.P.S. I’m an ex-shrink who writes novels. Check out my books here.