Remember when chewing gum was typically packaged in a thick, long rectangular casing that caused a bulge in a person’s shirt pocket?
Today gum packaging has taken on a sleek, slim look, more like a matchbook with a flip-top cover. As always, the relevant and fresh look and feel of a product is just as important to its sale as what the product is and does.
This kind of upgrade is happening in the book world, too. According to an article in The New York Times Media & Advertising (@NYTimesAd) section, publishers are wrapping books like Emma and Jane Eyre in new covers: provocative, modern jackets in bold shades of scarlet and lime green that are explicitly aimed at teenagers raised on “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games.”
The new versions are cutting edge replacements for the traditional (read: stuffy, boring) covers that have been a trademark of the classics for decades, those familiar, dour depictions of women wearing frilly clothing. In their place are images like the one of Romeo in stubble and a tight white tank top on a new Penguin edition of Romeo and Juliet.
The covers are intended to tap into the soaring popularity of the young-adult genre, the most robustly growing category in publishing. In the last decade, publishers have poured energy and resources into books for teenagers, releasing more titles each year. Bookstores have followed suit, creating and expanding special sections devoted to them.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you upgrade the cover design and packaging of your titles.
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