Social Relevance

I've discussed the cunning ploy used by publisher Orion/Gollancz/Weidenfeld for republishing classic books owned by another publisher: get hold of the cheap hardback rights, and publish the book as a small hardback at a paperback price. It's a tactic they're already using on a number of H. G. Wells' most famous SF works (see below), and they're about do it with five of his best 'social novels'. The designs for these paperback-sized hardbacks were done by Luke Roberts and Simon Cox, who won a competition run by design group D&AD. They run with the 'social problem' aspect by using a period newspaper look, with an object lying on the newspaper which interacts with a newspaper photograph in some way.

See more pictures here, and other entries in the competition here. (I especially like this, this, this and this.)

Penguin owns the paperback right to Wells' work, hence this hardback scheme. As I said before, a number of Wells' SF works are now in the Gollancz SF Masterworks series as cheap hardbacks. This excellent collection of books was recently given a facelift. Unfortunately, as I remarked before, part of this facelift involves tinting all of the covers a urinous yellow colour, a not entirely successful nod to the mid-20th-Century yellowjacket look of the Gollancz SF line.

And to compare, here are the Penguin Classics editions of these various titles, featuring the screenprint cover designs of Kate Gibb.