{"id":473,"date":"2010-10-07T09:18:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T13:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=473"},"modified":"2010-10-07T11:32:20","modified_gmt":"2010-10-07T15:32:20","slug":"tale-of-two-covers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/tale-of-two-covers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tale of Two Covers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of Frankfurt and the Book Fair this week, here\u2019s a curious tale of translation for covers.\u00a0 When the German translation of Birthmarked<\/em> popped up on Goodreads, I was delighted to see the cover was a striking and mysterious image of two vivid profiles over a dark background.\u00a0 I went right to an online translator to find that the new title \u201cdie stadt der verschwundenen kinder\u201d meant roughly \u201cThe City of the Missing\/Vanished Children,\u201d and I was like \u201cOooh, that\u2019s cool.\u201d\u00a0 It all fit my novel in a whole new way.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Cover of Glimmerglass in the U.S.<\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine my surprise when a Facebook friend pointed out that she knew the cover already: it belonged to Glimmerglass<\/em> by Jenna Black.\u00a0 Sure enough, they were the same except for mine was a mirror image of the other.<\/p>\n

\"\"

German cover of Birthmarked<\/p><\/div>\n

I asked my agent to check on the situation, and the upshot is that my German publisher, Heyne, liked the Glimmerglass<\/em> cover so much that it bought the exclusive rights to the art and the design to use in Germany.\u00a0 It\u2019s legal, if not commonly done, and since it would have been far more economical for Heyne to do a cover in-house, the purchase of expensive rights shows the publisher\u2019s commitment to the book.\u00a0 The translation of Glimmerglass<\/em> will have a different cover in Germany, incidentally.<\/p>\n

It was kind of an odd feeling, at first, having a second-hand cover, though I\u2019m used to it now.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help wondering if people would secretly snarl and think I stole something, when in fact the rights were fairly bought.\u00a0 I sometimes fear that Germans might pick up my book, hoping it\u2019s Jenna Black\u2019s, only to be disappointed that it\u2019s not.\u00a0 Sometimes I wonder why a pale, distinctly Caucasian, beautiful, blue-eyed girl is on the cover when Gaia is of mixed heritage, unremarkable in terms of beauty, and brown-eyed. \u00a0Then I think of the ideas of genetic merit in the book, and the history Germany has with a scary society that valued certain people over others, and I think it\u2019s actually a pretty gutsy cover.\u00a0 In the end, I\u2019m grateful my German publisher is so deeply invested in my book, from the inside translation to the outside cover.<\/p>\n

Life is strange.\u00a0 So is publishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of Frankfurt and the Book Fair this week, here\u2019s a curious tale of translation for covers.\u00a0 When the German translation of Birthmarked popped up on Goodreads, I was delighted to see the cover was a striking and mysterious image of two vivid profiles over a dark background.\u00a0 I went right to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9,26],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-birthmarked-2","tag-covers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}