27 August 2009

Coveting thy neighbours' new editions

Publishers can be very CLEVER and SNEAKY.
And we're not saying that as CLEVER and SNEAKY publishers, but as COVETOUS and EAGER book addicts.

The cleverest, sneakiest move of all is the beautiful redesign. Why so, you ask? Allow us to illustrate ...


We already own many of Peter Carey's books, so why on earth would we buy them again? Because now, thanks to Random House, they look like this:

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Our shelves already contain Coraline, JS and Mr N, and Mr Poe, so why, for heaven's sake, would we fork out good money to own them again? Because now the dastardly minds at Bloomsbury have come up with this:

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Most of us have at least two copies of P&P (each) as well as everything else Jane Austen ever wrote. So why, pray tell, would we consider buying them again? Because now, curse you Vintage Classics, they look like this:

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We have no shelf space left for anything, so why why why would we want to buy all these books we've already read? Well, just look at them. Thanks for nothing, Popular Penguins.

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Faber is one of the worst culprits at the moment, what with celebrating their 80th anniversary and all. How are we meant to say no to these?


Or these?
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GNARRRR! THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL. IT SHOULD BE BANNED. WE SHOULD BE SAVED FROM OURSELVES.


Are there any redesigns that have recently enticed you to buy a book you already own? We'd be keen to know, so we can buy buy buy ... *ahem*... avoid them at all costs.

1 comment:

Misrule said...

Oh, how I understand this impulse! My most recent example: I replaced my mismatched set of His Dark Materials with the gorgeous paperbacks with the "woodcut" cover design that Scholastic UK brought out a couple of years ago.