Orbit Books is re-releasing Jeff Somer’s novels, The Electric Church, The Digital Plague in Mass Market Paperback, and decided new covers were in order:
Along with those two is the cover for his third novel, The Eternal Prison, due in Trade Paperback in Fall 2009, with a MMPB version to follow in Spring 2010:
As is their habit, Orbit goes into detail about the creation of the new covers:
For your viewing pleasure, this week I present the brand-spanking-new mass Market versions of THE ELECTRIC CHURCH, THE DIGITAL PLAGUE, and THE ETERNAL PRISON by Jeff Somers. The original trade paperback covers (design by Keith Hayes, art by Jae Lee) are some of my favorite Orbit covers, but we decided to shake it up a bit for the mass market releases. This series is a noir detective story set in an apocalyptic future, and its cyberpunk feel simultaneously reminded me of a William Gibson book, Blade Runner, and some of my favorite video games.
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Jeff’s books sold well in trade paperback, but he’s a new author with a great voice, so we’re releasing him again in mass market to give him a chance to pick up new readers who may be willing to take a chance on a new author at a cheaper cover price. Since that’s the case, it only makes sense to redesign the covers — if a reader saw the original covers and really loved them, it’s implied that they picked up the books already, so why not go after the readers you missed? This works well in the case of this series, because the original covers, though gorgeous (in my opinion), were a little quiet. By quiet, I mean, they didn’t tell you just from the cover exactly what you could expect from the book. These books mix Jason Bourne — level action with Matrix-style apocalyptic futurism. Hopefully people who are interested in reading that kind of thing will see these covers and go “oooh, fun” and pick them up.
The original covers can be found HERE. I have to say, thought the originals were nice, these ones knock them out of the water! I’m a big fan of the bold, single colour design.
