AAUGH Blog reader Jon raises this question about Peanuts Volume 5: “Why is the cover art posted on Amazon different than what you have in your blog? Even the link you posted takes you to that different cover art.”

The answer is pretty simple: publishers enter their information into the distribution system well in advance of release of the work, sometimes a year. In many cases, the final art may not be available yet. (That’s why I’ve had several posts lately showing you the new cover appearing for my book.) If anything, this is probably more likely to happen with a comic book specialty publisher. Their product is generally mainly aimed at the comic book stores, with a very different distribution system that works with much shorter lead times. I regularly show you covers on Amazon for books that are nine months or so from release, and a comic book collection cover may not even have started being drawn at that point. What Kaboom does here, which they have also done in the past, is use a Peanuts cover image that they already have as a placeholder. In this case, they offered an image of an alternative cover for Peanuts 17… which is not one of the issues included in this collection.

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