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Do you care very much for the cover?


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DarkRoseFairy



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 271
Location: Alberta, Canada
PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 2:40 pm Reply with quote
From what I read in the spice and wolf forum, not many people like the fact they change the cover(though I think its pretty). In this case for me I fine with it, the one series I didn't like the cover is the twelve kindom series. I wish tokyopop didn't change it, I can't really explain why I don't like it, other then it doesn't give me that feeling is all I can say. Lucky for me I can read chinese so I brought the taiwan edition(the covers are the same as the original). I would still buy the tokyopop version if that the only choice because I really love the stories from what I saw in the anime.

Do you have any covers that you don't like because they change it or you are fine with it. Did that ever stop anyone from buying the book or you just unhappy with cover but like the story enough not to care?
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ninjapet



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 1517
PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 5:51 pm Reply with quote
I dis-liked the paper back covers for the release of the Haruhi novels.

Bright red and yellow covers does not look ok while reading in public.

Keeping the normal art would would have been fine, which is what the hard cover copy is for, but still bad pic for color think.

Also the Spice and Wolf cover seems fine, I mean if worst comes to worst make your own book jacket?
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population_tire



Joined: 31 May 2007
Posts: 572
PostPosted: Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:37 am Reply with quote
It's not that the cover is bad (I actually think it's pretty cool looking) it's the fact that they changed it from the Japanese version. Most anime/manga fans, including me, hate editing of any kind.
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suika



Joined: 12 Jan 2005
Posts: 33
PostPosted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 5:27 am Reply with quote
IMHO, what's inside the book is far more important than the cover. I'd be more concerned on how faithful the translation was and how well the story keeps me entertained. Besides if you don't like the cover, there's always the option of making your own.
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:32 am Reply with quote
I'm with suika

I think most of the Harry Potter books have super lame looking covers... which is why I throw away the paper part as soon as I get it. However, a stupid cover doesn't stop me from reading or buying them. I think with manga it's even less important since a lot of people have probably already read the content one way or another to begin with. At that point I imagine you're buying it to support the series so the cover should kinda be a zero factor.

I think if you honestly wouldn't buy something that you liked based off of a cover change or the cover being lame, you probably never had any intentions on buying it and were just looking for any excuse, no matter how minor, to justify not spending money on it.
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Kirikiri23



Joined: 28 Dec 2009
Posts: 130
PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:08 am Reply with quote
Yeah the covers important
I want people to know it's anime
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Keonyn
Subscriber



Joined: 25 May 2005
Posts: 5567
Location: Coon Rapids, MN
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:37 am Reply with quote
Why should it being anime even matter? That only perpetuates the concept of judging a book by its cover, or promote a sense of elitism amongst anime fans, which is not something this fandom needs even more of.
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DarkRoseFairy



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 271
Location: Alberta, Canada
PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:29 pm Reply with quote
population_tire wrote:
It's not that the cover is bad (I actually think it's pretty cool looking) it's the fact that they changed it from the Japanese version. Most anime/manga fans, including me, hate editing of any kind.

I agree with this, only when the cover or the story is not as good or is way worse then before. In the case of spices and wolf, for me I thought this cover is really nice(I like this cover more then the former).Though I do under stand why anime/manga fans won't like it(if they change the covers for kino journey I would be mad too), does anyone know if there going to be another edition with the original cover for spices and wolf?

No cover would ever make me hate it so much that I would make my own cover. Like I said before if there wasn't any other edition for twelve kingdom, I would buy the tokopop version.

Lastly not all light novels have an anime that is based off of it.
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DTJB



Joined: 20 Jan 2010
Posts: 671
Location: Dubuque, IA
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:41 pm Reply with quote
What's that about not judging a book by it's cover?
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wandering-dreamer



Joined: 21 Jan 2008
Posts: 1733
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 7:54 pm Reply with quote
DTJB wrote:
What's that about not judging a book by it's cover?

Total crap when you're actually talking about a book. Covers are advertisements and a good bit of time (from all the authors I've heard speak on the subject) goes into planning it out. And, also from what I've heard, there is a general belief in the American publishing industry that illustrated covers don't sell (which is a shame since I love them) which could be another reason that some light novels get re-done covers.
On the Spice and Wolf cover, I didn't like it since A) I thought the original illustration was very pretty and B)The semi-naked wolf girl on the cover weirded me out. I even showed it to my mother and she said that she would've thought that WAS the original Japanese cover since it was so different from mainstream US covers. For me it doesn't matter what book that cover was on, it was strange and not in the "Hey I'm curious, let's pick it up" sort of way.
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Haterater



Joined: 30 Apr 2006
Posts: 1727
PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 10:48 am Reply with quote
Don't much care for the cover. I always be sure I'm interested in the subject matter beforehand.

Sad to hear that illustrated covers don't sell. I would think it can help, especially with fantasy setting stories and the likes.
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chachaboru



Joined: 14 Jan 2011
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 9:50 am Reply with quote
i don't really care about the cover...
as long as the content is awesome i'll buy it...
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AyreonMaiden



Joined: 02 Nov 2010
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:16 am Reply with quote
Ehh, I care a fair bit. I like more minimalistic covers for novels. I don't know why, I associate the written word with visual minimalism.

I - abhor - the hardback Haruhi Suzumiya novel cover art. I was one of those people who got into the series through the anime, so I was used to Kyoto Animation's illustration style more than Noizi Ito's.

Conversely, the paperback covers for the official translations are classy as hell. I love collecting the paperbacks cause of how simple they look. The little Haruhi silhouette, the bright colors, the different typography for every novel, it all gels really well together and I vastly prefer that to the original covers.
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GeorgeBerger



Joined: 21 Jan 2011
Posts: 4
Location: Minnesota
PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 11:06 am Reply with quote
For the most part, I couldn't really care less about the cover of what I'm reading, but I also read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, which have a long and rich tradition of saddling books with questionable covers completely unrelated to the actual book inside. (For that matter, one of my roommates reads a lot of romance, a genre that apparently assigns semi-generic covers completely at random. Victorian story about a woman crossing the Atlantic on a steamship, and her infatuation with the young and inexperienced cabin boy? Let's put a well-muscled man in a kilt riding a horse bareback along a beach on the cover...)

As far as Spice & Wolf goes, I was unbothered by Yen having changed the covers, and bothered slightly by their having produced a fairly horrible cover for the first one. (Volumes 2 and 3 are better.)

Not light novels, but if you want to shudder at covers, compare the old generation, 1990s white-background covers for the Oh, My Goddess! manga to the newest generation ones... particularly volume three. If anything I own would make me ashamed to be seen in public reading it, it's that...
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Minatsu



Joined: 16 Feb 2011
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:42 am Reply with quote
I actually prefer the Yen Press version of the Spice and Wolf covers to the original. They look more like I imagine the character looking like than her anime/manga style version. I don't mind covers that are different from the Japanese version if they are well done, and preferably if the original is included somewhere in the book so we can at least see what it looked like.
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