Check out the new cover for How to Be Bad! Gator is new, girl is old. The paperback is coming out this summer, and along with the gator on the cover it'll have all kinds of fun extras: a playlist, top-secret emails we sent while working on the book, etc. (Here, by the way, is the official How to Be Bad page, which has photos from our travel adventures, a video, and various other fun stuff).
Do you notice my name is now at the bottom, rather than the top? That's because when it was in alphabetical order, as on the first cover, all the bookshops were shelving HTBB only under my name, and not under Sarah's or Lauren's. And we decided that since the glorious Ms. Myracle is a NYTimes bestselling author, we'd rather be shelved under her name than mine! Hence the change.
(Yes, for some reason it is impossible to shelve under multiple authors...)
Also: as Lauren points out here (a very amusing post) HTBB and Disreputable History and Bliss are nominated (with a gazillion other cool books) for the Teen Choice award. So you can go vote between now and January 31!
I love getting cover art. It is one of my favorite parts of being a writer. So tell me: which cover do you like, and why?
Ooo, I *do* like the new cover! Why? Because it has that awesome Old Joe gator on it.
I feel embarrassed about the name order switcheroo, though. Thanks goodness were such dear buddies that we all just shake our heads and laugh at the oddities of marketing. ;)
Posted by: lauren myracle | January 13, 2009 at 10:30 AM
I definitely like the old cover (with the girl) better. I like pics of real people better than other ones, usually, so that's probably why.
Posted by: Amber | January 13, 2009 at 02:56 PM
I like the new cover i guess but..it's a little annoying to have new content in the book's paperback edition when I already bought the hardcover.
Posted by: William | January 13, 2009 at 06:38 PM
I love the new cover! It reminds me of your other books and their style, so it's sort of like you get the cover recognition and Lauren gets the name switch. Win, win. And now the book is shelved in two places!
And Sarah gets to be highly visible in the middle. Cool.
Posted by: Melissa Walker | January 13, 2009 at 07:01 PM
William,
Publishers do this a lot these days. Add in book club guides or author Q&As in paperback editions. I suppose it's to engage readers who might have read the book in school or had it from the library; and to make the PB seem fresh. I can see why it would be frustrating, though.
Posted by: E. Lockhart | January 13, 2009 at 09:30 PM
I love the new cover. I always wondered why there was only one girl on the original cover when the story was equally split between the three of them.
Posted by: Alexa | January 18, 2009 at 01:45 AM
Alexa - The other two girls are on the back! it's a wraparound.
Posted by: E. Lockhart | January 21, 2009 at 12:23 PM