Entertainment
The Hottest Trend in Publishing: Books You Can Judge by Their Cover
Elaborately designed books with patterned edges and other effects started as a trend in romance and fantasy, and have now spread throughout the publishing industry.
Last year, a romance publisher took an expensive gamble on the latest novel by the best-selling author Rebecca Yarros.
To help the novel, “Fourth Wing,” stand out in the crowded fantasy-romance genre, the publisher, Entangled, invested in a limited deluxe edition with a bold metallic cover and black sprayed edges featuring dragons.
It worked: All 115,000 copies of the deluxe edition sold out almost everywhere within a week.
“My only regret is that I printed too few,” said Liz Pelletier, Entangled’s publisher.
When the next novel in the series, “Iron Flame,” came out, Entangled was prepared, and printed a million copies of the deluxe edition. Once again, they quickly sold out.
For the third book in the series, “Onyx Storm,” which comes out in January, Entangled is printing two million copies of the deluxe edition, which has stenciled artwork and black and silver edges adorned with flying gold and black dragons, along with a smaller print run of 500,000 standard copies. More than a million “Onyx Storm” deluxe editions have already sold. After realizing there was an enormous appetite for special editions, Entangled has started giving the deluxe, sprayed-edge treatment to most of its books, Pelletier said.
“Now, to not spray-paint the edges would send the wrong kind of signal, that a book is not worth collecting,” she said.
