New covers for old books.

[denouement16.livejournal.com]

Laurell has gone on and on about the new cover art for the Anita series, but it never sunk in that this meant the early books were being repackaged again.   This is the third round of covers for the first eight books.  None of the other series I have read have gone through so many repackagings.  Are some of the completists out there buying the old books with the new covers?  LKH says the new covers are to get away from the sexualized imagery, but it seems to me that the goal is to get existing fans to shell out even more money for books they already read. 
At least putting these kinds of covers on the old books isn't the kind of false advertising the Blood Noir cover was!
Link to LKH's page with the new covers:
http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/works.html

Comments

[rin-x-x.livejournal.com]

It all looks like false advertising, tbh. I've never read the AB series, but it never once came across to me as gritty as those covers seem to represent.

She wants to appeal to a larger crowd, to trick them into thinking AB is all bad ass when really the central character just whores around and tries to be all "bad ass" when she can barely cover her own ass at that. Chances are she and her publishing house are freaking out at how little the books are selling (except for her devoted fan base). Or at least thats what I think.

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

But if she covered her ass, that'd cut into the amount of sex she could have per book...

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

When the books first came out, the early ones, they had interesting, noir/ pulp style covers. The sexualised covers came in much later. I have to admit that I don't like the newest covers much at all - they'd put me off, to be honest, if I didn't already know what horrors awaited between them. :/

[kynekh-amagire.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHAHA, is that a deer antler on Obsidian Butterfly? Ran out of variations on the theme of "something sharp or stabby" pretty fast, huh? I remember seeing the cover of Blood Noir and wondering if the resemblance of the new cover art to a slightly less grisly Saw movie poster was intentional.

I think my paperback Discworld run has more different cover-art styles than Anita Blake, but that's probably the only one.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

There was a tweet aaaaages ago (and I'm too tired to slog through her twitter to find it) about how it wasn't her decision, but the publisher to try and set her apart from all the clones out there. Which is a fair point, because when AB:VH had the sexy bodypart covers, there were all the backporn and low-riding jeans heroine pose covers of the wannabes too, and everything looked/read kinda samey.

So on the one hand, I'm kicking back and waiting for the new influx of clones. But on the other, the UK Jim Butcher covers did it first (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Storm-Front-Dresden-Case-Files/dp/1841493988/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261437281&sr=8-4) (but with actual relevance), and to a degree Kim Harrison's repackaged covers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Witch-Walking-Rachel-Morgan/dp/0007236093/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261437399&sr=1-3). I say Harrison, because of the bright colours with stark contrast.

From a completist side of things, I...I think I'm a very bad collector? I'm not really interested in getting all versions of the covers, but I will probably go to great pains to get the originals (or would, if I didn't already have them). I really loved the first run of the UK covers with the Anita Action Pose Gallery that came out right when the US Sexy Bodypart repackaging came around (I hated the Sexy Bodypart covers), and those ones are pretty hard to find now. The UK covers now tend to be a face that takes up most of the cover and something vaguely related going on in the background.

I think the new AB:VH covers could be cool if they weren't for AB:VH. Or if the covers had something to do with the actual books. On a small photo safari the other day, I took a photo of the Laughing Corpse (http://pics.livejournal.com/dwg/pic/000ka5cc) and am so WTAF over how it's got a black butterfly on there. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ZOMBIES/COMEDY CLUB? NO REALLY. If it had been the Obsidian Butterfly cover, it'd be awesome. I don't understand what's going on in the marketing department, but I want to have a stern talk with who signed off on these. :\

That said, the UK covers of the MG books have been a million lightyears better than the US ones, simply because there's less WTFery going on and not quite so neon magenta or cyan to sear your eyes. Alas, I have US covers on my MG hardbacks.

[denouement16.livejournal.com]

I have the original books. That's why I'm wondering about this 3rd repackaging :)

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

The original US ones were very much pulp covers, like this one here :

http://ipac.selco.info/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&aspect=power&npp=10&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=rw&ri=&index=ISBNEX&term=051513449X&oper=and&x=12&y=9&aspect=power&index=.TW&term=&oper=and&index=.SW&term=&oper=and&index=.SE&term=&ultype=&uloper=%3D&ullimit=&ultype=&uloper=%3D&ullimit=&sort=#focus

I didn't like the UK run with the Anita Action poses, as by that time Buffy was on TV and it was a very obvious attempt to corner the teenage market.

I think that's supposed to be a death's head moth, a la 'Silence of the Lambs' on that copy of 'The Laughing Corpse'? But it has nothing to do with the book!

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't like any of the re-packagings as much as the original covers :/

[denouement16.livejournal.com]

"Or if the covers had something to do with the actual books."

That's exactly it! The new cover style could have actually used something from the early books, but they don't. A machete dripping blood would be an obvious choice since that's what Anita actually uses in her "day" job.

[kynekh-amagire.livejournal.com]

For the cover of Danse Macabre, a wrapped condom?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The original US pulp covers are the ones that I've got! I went to a lot of trouble to get those covers, as the Sexy Bodypart line were juuuust coming out when I could finally afford to buy the series. I've only got one UK cover, and that's with the softcover CS that I got when I was waiting for the publisher to send me a replacement CS that I had to send back due to 33 pages being missing.

IT'S NOT A DEATH'S HEAD MOTH. THERE'S NO DEATH'S HEAD. I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I spotted the book across the store and thought, "oh wow, OB cover that's cool," and had to do a double-take on the title. It's a pity, because the Skin Trade cover of the same design is actually pretty cool with the doll parts. But then there's a broken lightbulb for GP, and we're back to WTFistan.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I thought you meant those ones with a small, skinny teenage girl on the front. There were a few UK covers like that and they were awful :/

lol at the moth/ butterfly FAIL :D

[dwg.livejournal.com]

YEAH. My WTF of that started with Blood Noir and the rusty scissors. Unless rusty scissors figure in the story somehow, WTAF. Also, saws on the Skin Trade cover (this motif is carried on with a timber mill getting random shots in an LKH promo vid, so she's wandering around St Louis and then talking about the book, and then we get to see lumber being trimmed. MAYBE IT'S NOT VERY SUBTLE SYMBOLISM.) and now a razorblade on the cover of Flirt.

I like the minimalism. I like the colours. I'm a very colour oriented person and will probably be able to pick out the books easier that way rather than reading the title. I just think that someone needs to learn what google search is so they can photoshop a better cover.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I liked those UK covers with the small girl on the front getting her Buffy on, but they were so hard to find and by then I'd gotten most of the collection. It could be my bad on the language here, because I need to go to sleep instead of replying to comments.

But like I said, I think I might be a bad collector? I don't like having duplicates of books. I have the original run, that's special enough for me. I don't need everything to match. And it's a bit interesting to see the different cover progression as the series goes on.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

I liked those original UK covers, too--I had them all at one point until they shifted to the woman's face for NiC. Though I used to always think the girl was a tad out of proportion, but anyway.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

I had all of the old pulp covers in paperback up to Blue Moon and then the hardback for Obsidian Butterfly, which was the first one to come out with colored body parts. I like the original covers. At least they had some relation to the book.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I only buy a recovered book if I like the new cover better than the old one. Or else one copy of the book goes to the friendly local used book store.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

It always makes me sort of shake my head- she's worried about sexualized cover imagery, but there's so much sexualized content in the latter half of the series that at least they were advertising the product correctly. I feel sorry for anyone who jumps in based on the less sexy, more powerful covers only to stumble into the ardeur and all that crap eight books in or so.

[flirtswithfan.livejournal.com]

I think the new covers are certainly going to stand out in the romance section where some stores are now shelving her books. These new covers might be a bad attempt to have them reclassified as horror.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

I can think of a few authors who get repackaged this much. Stephen King, R.A. Salvatore, and Nora Roberts all get new packages with every reprint, it seems.

And in the romance genre, holy cow, Catherine Coulter. That's a sneaky one, because they rename her books and make them seem like they're new.

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

Putting some Interesting New Covers on old books isn't anything particularly unusual, as far as I've seen, especially when the old covers gradually fall out of style. I've always thought it would be pretty neat to do a book of the covers of certain 'classic' books have been repackaged for each new decade/era/fashion. I saw an edition of 1984 that looked like a classic pulp sci-fi novel, with a cover painting of Julia in Seductive 50's Babe Mode rubbing up against Winston in a crowd.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

At least the Nora Roberts ones have a deal on the front that tells you it's the first time a work has been published, to cut down on the confusion.

Or the deal with the In Death series where they went back and reissued the paperbacks to match the new (somewhat ugly) cover scheme. My hardcovers show a progression in style, which is pretty neat.

DV

[denouement16.livejournal.com]

All of my R.A. Salvatore are the original run, so I didn't know they were repackaged. Renaming books just seems underhanded.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I wish LKH good luck with that. Also from my book store:

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I *don't* understand where she says that her books got people slapped by old ladies even in the original US covers. They were not SEXY AT ALL! I dug the originals and I was not happy when they recovered all of them the first time.