Blank Book Covers

I’ve thought a couple times about writing a post focusing on books I bought merely because of the cover. I love the whole cover-design thing – I find it fascinating – especially when I have bought a book just because the cover appealed to me … and sometimes … not often, but sometimes … these random books whose covers literally called to me … have turned out to be some of my favorite novels ever. (Hopeful Monsters is a great example – however, the edition of the book out now does NOT have the cover that it had when I bought it … and I have to say, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, impulsively, with its current cover. I shiver to think of not having discovered that book merely because of the cover design!!)

So, speaking of book covers – I love this whole idea:

According to consumer research, when we decide whether or not to buy a book, cover design is always the most important thing. Despite this, we’d like to introduce you to a new series of books called My Penguin.

We’re throwing open six of our favourite Classics by publishing them with naked front covers and we’d really love for you to be involved – and to have as good a time coming up with covers as we’ve had in putting the series together.

The 6 books are:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Grimm, Magic Tales
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray
Jane Austen, Emma

So cool! The books were released – with reader-designed covers – yesterday.

Scroll down here to take a look at the gallery of covers they have received from people (you can click on them to enlarge the images). A 5 year old sent in her design for Picture of Dorian Gray – ha! Love it!! But there are so many cool images in the gallery – really fun to look at.

The one below might be my favorite, though:

Go check out the rest!