Foreign Rights: Let’s talk international book covers!
In anticipation of The London Book Fair in April, we continue our series on everything foreign rights related. Today, our attention turns towards international book covers. Prepare your eyes for a road trip around the world!
When a book is sold abroad, it is normally up to the publisher to create their own cover for their edition. Each international market has its own sense of style, taste, and knowledge about what kind of cover sells. Now, everyone says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but everyone will also tell you that specific genres tend to have similar looking covers. Genre covers tend to follow patterns and trends, so in this way, readers are quickly able to discern whether a book is a thriller, women’s fiction, literary, or sci-fi and even fantasy. This subconsciously signals to readers what kind of a book they can expect when they open the pages.
This thinking is not just in the UK, but globally. So, when a book is sold internationally, the foreign publisher tends to wait for the UK cover to be released and see if it fits within their market. There can be vast differences – even when it comes to UK and US covers, a lot can change. For example:
Despite these changes, you get a clear sense of what the book is like and understand what you are getting. Each country caters to what its readers like to see on shelves!
Now, sometimes there is a special cover that just sings. We have recently had some covers that have struck a chord across the world. Here are just a few:
When a cover becomes iconic, many international publishers will acquire the same cover for their edition. UK publishers hold the cover rights and will license them for a fee. So, if a foreign publisher likes the UK cover, they must buy the rights to use it in their edition. They are allowed to tweak the cover to account for using their own language, but the essence of the cover remains the same.
Once the foreign publisher makes their changes, they send it to us at Mushens Entertainment so that it can be approved by the author. They typically send over a translation of the back blurb, as for the author to approve their biography, and they also send the title. Sometimes, a direct translation of a title into a foreign language does not work. There may be colloquialisms and social connotations that may come into play with a direct translation. When this happens, the publisher will ask to change the title and send an explanation of why, and what they will change it to. Sometimes we go back and forth about titles, suggesting some, rejecting others, and eventually falling in love with what is ultimately chosen.
As mentioned above, publishers create jackets that fit within a genre specific space. Let’s take a look at Jen William’s DOG ROSE DIRT - a thriller - that has had multiple covers across the world:
As you can see, these all read thriller. However, they are all changed to fit in with the country they sold. So, similar vibe, different styles!
We hope you have enjoyed this quick chat about international covers! Here are a few more that have changed across the world. Can you guess what they are?
