For my last birthday I received the international bestseller “Eat, pray, love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I loved the book so much I decided to buy a copy for a friend, and while searching Amazon I noticed that there was a second cover design for this book.
I know having different covers for a book is common, but the difference between these two was so subtle that I only noticed it because I was already familiar with the story.
On the cover I owned, the type is laid out on a plain white background.
On the other cover, the white background is actually white bathroom tile floor suggested only by two lines of grout.
Without giving away the story, this small bathroom tile detail captures the essence of the book, and is a large part of the writers journey. Out of pure curiosity, I took the liberty of contacting the designer, Helen Yentus to find out what happened between the first and second printing of the book.
“They changed that cover after I stopped working there. It’s very common for covers to change slightly when they go into paperback. Perhaps the paperback publisher felt that the tiles muddled the cover or maybe it didn’t look that great when it got shrunk down. It could’ve have been a marketing decision of some sort. I’m really not sure. In any case, it doesn’t really bother me too much. Maybe I’m just used to. I think the essence of the cover survived in this case which often doesn’t happen in the transition from hard cover to paperback.”
While I was hoping for more juicy details from the cutting room floor, I guess I will just have to leave that up to my imagination. I agree with Helen that the essence of the cover survived and still works without the tile, but when you see what the designer really had in mind, the cover becomes truly complete. This is why they pay us the big bucks, right? It just begs the question, why change a perfect cover, by removing a detail only few of us will ever notice. If the publisher really wanted to have a different cover for the paperback he should have redesigned it, although I doubt he could have topped the original design.
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