Cover cwestion

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 cover seen here
The cover seen here
The cover now showing at Amazon
The cover now showing at Amazon


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.

Upcoming releases
Destined to blow up

Puffer Jacket Snoopy is a thing… enough of a thing that I’ll be discussing an item that only barely qualifies for this blog (it comes with a book… a tiny book of stickers.) Amazon is now listing for October release a Desktop Inflatable Puffer Jacket Snoopy. It’s one of the …

Upcoming releases
The Return of What’s Necessary

Coming in April is a reissue of Only What’s Necessary, Chip Kidd’s second book on the art of Peanuts, reissued for the 75th anniversary of the strip. (My review of the original 2015 edition is here.) For those keeping track, this is the third cover for this book. Here are the …

Upcoming releases
Covers to coming things

It’s that time when all the computer systems update and suddenly we’re seeing covers t0o some of the books that are rolling down the road toward us. The big one in this batch is probably Snoopy: The Story of My Life, which is the Cartoon Art Museum’s Andrew Farago ghosting …