The other day I got an email from my contact at Delacorte Press encouraging me to promote the movie tie-in edition for James Dashner’s “The Maze Runner.” To be perfectly honest, I glanced at the email and then shoved it into my “later” file. (Which is like shoving it into a black hole.) Why? Because I have NEVER been a fan of movie tie-in covers. My thought process behind this:
Why are publishing companies trying to promote the movie? Shouldn’t they be promoting the BOOK?
I know, I know…it’s sounds naive (and quite frankly biased) of me to feel this way, BUT there you have it. (Full disclosure.) To add pain to the punishment, 90% of the time I find the covers lacking.
As a reader I have formed a picture in my head. When I go to the see the MOVIE adaptation (of the book) I am ok with establishing a disconnect between MY version and the MOVIE version. (Which is probably why I’m not overly critical of adaptations. I can appreciate them for their own unique interpretation.) But all of that gets lost when I am forced to embrace the two as one. The MOVIE is one thing. The BOOK is another. I understand the need to sell them as a whole (for publicity and marketing purposes) but at the end of the day I’m a bibliophile, and I prefer the beauty of a books original artwork.
That said… (and this is the point in this rant where I come across as a raging hypocrite) I did (after a few hours) actually go back and read that email from Aisha, and low and behold… I actually LIKED the cover. As a matter of fact, I liked it more than the original.
I’m going to chalk this up to the fact that there are no hollywood faces on the cover, but it got me thinking…
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there are a few movie tie-in covers that deserve a little credit. So, I found a few. And despite my critical eye (and heart) found that I really liked some of them. Which brings me to the point of this post (besides featuring the Maze Runner tie-in.)
What do you think of Movie Tie-In covers? Should they be banished or embraced?
Here are a few for you to check out and give your two cents on.
I liked 3 of these, can you guess which ones?
Ender’s Game, City of bones, & World War Z?
Close…. 😉