You can usually tell if a book if a UK or foreign edition. There are certain styles or designs that you simply wouldn’t see on a UK cover. As diverse as book covers may be, there is something that tells you (aside from the English text) it’s a UK or at least an Anglo-version.

Author Mary Nichols happens to be hugely popular in Hungary and we’ve just seen the new Hungarian cover to her book The Fountain.

The picture is really rather lovely. I adore the palette of colours, and they weave beautifully together in that blurred background.  But that’s really all that draws your eye.  I’m left just admiring the image – something I could see illustrating a page in a magazine or photography book – as the author name and title practically blend invisibly into the background image.

It’s very unlike a UK book cover, where the author name and the title of the book usually plays an important role on the cover. The text is either presented in a much bolder way, forms an instrinsic part of design itself, or determines how the image sits on the cover. And then there would be a strapline or a quote, or other elements that would shout out: I am a book.  If you look at our edition here, you’ll see what I mean.)

With this cover, I almost feel as though the designer unconsciously wished he didn’t have to marr the beautiful photograph with text. And in fact, I’d have to agree.  Many UK book covers would lack something if you took the text away, whereas perhaps in the case of Hungarian book covers (if we take this cover as being representative of others) removing the text would make the cover image more beautiful still.

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager