Foreign editions

Meljean's Posts

Obviously, I really love talking about covers (or Photoshopping them.) This time, it’s all about foreign covers.

Although it doesn’t always happen, many books receive new covers after they’ve been bought by a foreign publisher and/or translated. There are two primary reasons for this, and one is that the rights to the artwork don’t always head overseas along with the manuscript. But the more important reason simply is: international audiences don’t always respond to American covers the same way that Americans do. So the publishers create covers better suited to their audiences. Sometimes, these covers are knock-your-socks-off amazing. Other times, there’s a total WTF? moment. (And some are scary, but I don’t have any of those here.)

I’m just going to post some up with only a little commentary (you might recognize a few authors 😀 ) and I’m curious — are there any that you like better than their American counterparts? Are there any that would have given you an entirely different impression of the book inside? And what’s your favorite foreign cover?

German:

I'm guessing this is Magic Bites, just because the pub date is the earliest of those on Amazon.de. I'm not sure what to make of the face tattoo, but the colors are really lovely.
I have no idea which of Kresley Cole's books this is. It seems almost more romancey than a few of her own covers do, though.
I love all of Wilks's German covers (I love the first one best, but I couldn't get a screenshot of it.) They all have "Wolf Shadow" across the front, which I think must be the series name they are using.

UK covers:

I love this cover SO much. I mean, I really love her US covers (especially Archangel's Kiss) but this is just gorgeous, too.
Just as an example, not every cover goes through massive changes. This one received a new font treatment, but the front cover image stayed very much the same.
I like this one, but I probably wouldn't have recognized it as an urban fantasy novel. I've seen many UK covers that I prefer over US covers, but for the Mercy Thompson books, I love love the colors and tattoos (and that Dan Dos Santos art.)
This is the cover for Ward's new Fallen Angels series, and quite a bit different from her US cover (a beefy guy on a motorcycle.) It actually looks more like the UK BDB covers (Lover Mine, in particular) with the grainy wash and font design. While I like some of the early BDB UK covers, I much prefer the more recent US ones.

French covers:

I thought this was interesting -- they actually illustrated a scene from the book, rather than giving a UF-vibe with a chick-with-a-sword cover. An illustration of a scene typically reminds me of Edgar Rice Burroughs type of fantasy, or a little old school sword and scorcery, so I might have picked this up anyway.
One of my favorite French covers -- I just <3 that illustration like crazy.
And the last of today's covers. I really like this cover, but I'll admit that I might have thought it was a zombie book. (Er...I mean, a book about zombies. Not a book that has risen from the dead.)

So, any favorites?