In 1954, Popular Library reissued the novel in paperback. It looked like this:
It became an international bestseller and the basis for both a Broadway musical and an Elvis Presley movie. Go figure.
The art of book cover art is, frankly, a mystery. Sometimes publishers commission original art. Sometimes they buy the rights to existing art and then wait for a book to come along that they can slap it on. Sometimes they're content merely to see just how close they can come to infringing on the cover art of last year's mega-bestseller without actually doing so, and sometimes they even change the title of the book so that it works better with some piece of art they already have in inventory. I am not making this up.
To be honest, nobody knows what makes a cover that sells books, or even if more than a very small percentage of customers make their decision to buy based on the cover art. Personally, after looking at thousands upon thousands of books—including my own; where did that giant laser-shooting flying starfish on the cover of the Brazilian edition of Maverick come from?—I no longer assume the cover art has anything at all to do with what's inside the book, and from that I've become a pushover for pure pulp. For my money HARD CASE CRIME is doing the best cheesy lurid pulp covers these days, but Karen won't let me use the cover art for The Vengeful Virgin to illustrate this point.
How about you? What's your favorite style of cover art? What images are instant turn offs? And what book cover art is so cheesy it should be served in a box from Papa Murphy's?
Let the arguments begin.
ULTIMAGE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.
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