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Holly A.J.'s avatar

The difference between the US and UK book cover design of The Book Makers is interesting. I prefer the UK design, but the hyphen in the US Book-Makers that explains an autocorrect phenomenon that really annoys me. I will type a two word phrase and spell check/autocorrect will suggest a hyphen between the two words, even though I have never seen a hyphen between them before. Canadian spelling and punctuation is closer to UK than US, but because we buy technology in North America spell check/autocorrect functions are often US by default.

I love a good cover design, but lately I've been chosing good inside book formatting over cover design. I got a few modern paperback editions of books I liked that had very nice cover designs, only to discover the faint printing and thin paper, thin enough for the printing to show through on the other side of the paper, rendered the edition too difficult to read.

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Meredith Davis's avatar

Love this post! We're big Harry Potter fans, and the UK covers were so cool, and different, from the US. I've had some firsthand experience with covers as a children's book author. The first (Her Own Two Feet) looked totally different than I imagined it would, but the design team at Scholastic knew what they were doing and I love talking to kids about the choices they made, from the colors (mirroring those of the Rwandan flag) to the photo of my Rwandan coauthor (it says so much about who she is and the kind of story we're telling). Book two, middle grade fiction, was a totally different experience. I had an illustrator, the talented Billy Yong, who did both interior and cover art for The Minor Miracle, working with the design team at Waterbrook. It's a fascinating process. Thanks for pulling back the curtain here.

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