Do you have any favourite editions?

[jack]

The previous post stands not-withstanding my tendency to be attached to the first cover I see a book in. This applies most to classics which I learned to love in old penguin monocolour covers off my parents, and I expect to see no differently.

But others as well. Watership down is always associated with my parents' particular copy, where the seriousness of the brown rabbit surrounded by flowery grass is underscored by the wornness of the cover. Anything cute doesn't cut it for me.

You can generally go to something abstract -- preferably dark and snazzy and serious -- from a picture, but trying to put a picture of characters I've only ever pictures invariably falls flat for me.

I don't blame publishers for this -- I already love your book, please do attract new readers! I'm just explaining how I feel. For Ender's Game, maybe I do blame.

Comments

[frithonthehills.livejournal.com]

Oh, I entirely agree about the Sharpe books. I found a copy of Sharpe's Eagle with the original cover once, which just looked weird.

I really dislike the "wrong" covers for Pratchett and Harry Potter - the adult ones just don't feel like the right books. Similar for the Tom Holts, the Robert Rankins, the Star Treks, and any number of others.

Sometimes I'll put off buying books until I can find one that matches the others in the set - took me *ages* to buy a copy of Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson for exactly this reason.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really liked some of the Harry Potter adult covers. I feel daft because everyone thinks they only exist to salve one's dignity or something (like that can't apply to me) but, but I just like them.

Whereas, for Terry Pratchett I think of the common (Kirby?) covers as *the* covers, as much part of a book as illustrations are[1]. And anything else isn't just odd, or not to my taste, but a startling revision...

[1] When I first started I didn't like them so much, but now I'm just so used to them, and can even find similar authors by looking for similar covers :)