My Imaginary Book Cover

Some time ago I mentioned a post at http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/01/25/how-to-make-a-chinese-or-japanese-book-cover/ discussing the art cliches used in “Asian” book-covers in general. I also noted this hadn’t seemed to take hold in Korean translations just yet (or at least the ones I have).

Another article has popped up on this topic over at eccentric yoruba (ALAS, Link has expired), and it focuses entirely on the “cropped female facial image” approach. It has good examples of the trope, but what is most interesting to me is that it doesn’t seem like a single example is of a Korean novel.

A clever analyst can spin straw from gold just as easily as make gold from base elements. So there are (at least) two ways to look at this.

First, one could argue that Korean translations don’t fall into this graphic trap.

Second, one could argue that bloggers don’t see the covers of Korean translations, because they aren’t successful.

My immediate thought is mostly the second, and perhaps a bit of credit in that the first  is also explanatory.

It will be a good day when there is enough Korean literature in read translation that we will need to discuss if the book covers have become stale. 😉