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Old 03-29-2014, 03:37 PM   #1
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What's the deal with generic covers in ebooks?
I think we've all seen those generic covers, with just author, title, publisher on a graphic template. I've seen this even with recent (retail) books whose cover must already exist in convenient e-format. What the heck? Are they just too lazy? Trying to save 100k? Avoid paying loyalty to the cover artist?
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Old 03-29-2014, 03:45 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Barty View Post
I think we've all seen those generic covers, with just author, title, publisher on a graphic template. I've seen this even with recent (retail) books whose cover must already exist in convenient e-format. What the heck? Are they just too lazy? Trying to save 100k? Avoid paying loyalty to the cover artist?
Yes! (to all 3)
Some artists even refuse to allow Digital versions of their images. The ones that you do find may not be authorized.
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Old 03-29-2014, 07:33 PM   #3
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I always feel really gypped when there is no cover. Particularly if the book has been expensive.

I prefer cover view on my reader as I have a better memory for covers than book titles. That stupid big penguin on all those covers makes me grind my teeth >.<
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Old 03-29-2014, 07:36 PM   #4
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Got to love calibre. **All** my books have real covers.
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Old 03-29-2014, 08:42 PM   #5
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Got to love calibre. **All** my books have real covers.
This.
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Old 03-30-2014, 02:14 AM   #6
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Other than the actual book cover page, on a eReader, the book cover looks like a thumbnail in the library list page etc. If the typeface or fonts of the book title is small, it may be hard to make out what the book title is because of the thumbnail, there are graphics/photos on it and the typeface/fonts are small. With generic book covers, hopefully that would make the e-book a lot cheaper.

I'm glad all the Penguin e-books I bought has real book covers.
Last edited by rollei; 03-30-2014 at 02:22 AM.
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Old 03-30-2014, 03:43 AM   #7
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Yes it's really annoying. I agree with jgaiser

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Originally Posted by jgaiser View Post
Got to love calibre. **All** my books have real covers.
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Old 03-30-2014, 04:15 AM   #8
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Yeah, some publishers are cheap that way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rollei View Post
Other than the actual book cover page, on a eReader, the book cover looks like a thumbnail in the library list page etc. If the typeface or fonts of the book title is small, it may be hard to make out what the book title is because of the thumbnail, there are graphics/photos on it and the typeface/fonts are small. With generic book covers, hopefully that would make the e-book a lot cheaper.

I'm glad all the Penguin e-books I bought has real book covers.
Penguin is somewhat notorious for giving you a picture of a penguin instead of a cover. In my experience, they are the worst publisher in this regard.

Quote:
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Yes it's really annoying. I agree with jgaiser
calibre +1
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Old 04-06-2014, 11:59 AM   #9
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Yeah this is annoying as it get. Although I have found a way around it through software but
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Old 04-06-2014, 06:01 PM   #10
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I see book covers as black-and-white thumbnails on my eink reader, so fancy cover art is lost on me. I'm fine with just the author and title.
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Old 04-06-2014, 06:50 PM   #11
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In all honesty, I hardly ever see the covers on my ereader, so it doesn't really matter much to me.

(But I do tend to slip in an appropriate cover if the ebook doesn't come with one.)
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Old 04-07-2014, 02:26 AM   #12
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I do think the cover is important, so much so that I set the current book's as screensaver.
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Old 04-07-2014, 11:50 AM   #13
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If I import it into Calibre and it has one of those generic covers I tell Calibre to download the cover...I don't know or care where they get it, I like the pretty covers. Of course, I also manually split and edited the metadata on all umpty-hundred Tor short stories put out in that collection last year to have the right covers, so I may be a little overboard about covers.
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Old 04-07-2014, 01:51 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Joykins View Post
If I import it into Calibre and it has one of those generic covers I tell Calibre to download the cover...I don't know or care where they get it, I like the pretty covers.
I do the same. It is one of the things I like about Calibre. I edit all my books to show covers on my reader.

I really hate those generic covers that Penguin e-books have.
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Old 04-07-2014, 03:42 PM   #15
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I am not sure if this is only in Australia but Penguin paperbacks quite often have the generic covers
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