Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: US cover design by Chip Kidd (Knopf) UK cover design by Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker) The office was split-lots found the UK cover more interesting, complex and compelling, but I always go in for simplicity, and the purity of that juicy yellow on the US cover… Can’t beat it.
Lucia Berlin, Evening in Paradise: US cover design by Na Kim (FSG) UK cover design by Justine Anweiler (Picador UK) Personally, I don’t think either is too commercial, but the US one feels simpler and more iconic to me, so US it is. Winner: Again, these are both great, and the Literary Hub office is split: some find the US cover too commercial, but think the UK cover looks like a piece of art-and some thought exactly the opposite. Tommy Orange, There There: US cover design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf) UK cover design by Suzanne Dean and Bryn Perrott (Harvill Secker) But as far as which one has the potential to make me cross the room to pick it up? I suppose that would have to be the US cover-though I’m a devoted Mendelsund fan, so take it with a grain of salt. I love the audacity of the UK cover, especially with the backward text, which is something I could easily see an over-cautious publicity department nixing. Winner: These covers are so different in tone that it’s really hard to choose. Or just imagine my picks are pure and unskewed, and feel free to argue with them in the comments! Ben Marcus, Notes from the Fog: US cover design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf) UK cover design by Jamie Keenan (Granta) On that note, please bear in mind that I am an American writer and reader, and therefore US book covers are made for people like me-but also bear in mind that I may have gotten bored with the American covers, and the UK ones have that sparkly new quality that makes me like them better. Since big books are often published concurrently (or at least closely together) in the US and the UK, I thought I would compare some of my favorites here, and even dare to choose which one I like better. So one of my favorite exercises after a year of covering and reading about books is to shake up my memory and see how the covers I’m familiar with looked in other countries. Some of their covers are great, some mediocre, some simply odd, but the ones we remember from the pack tend to be either the most unusual or the most repeated.
Over any given year, those of us in the literary media see hundreds of books pass by.
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