How many covers are too many?

Last autumn to coincide with the release of Fellowship of the Ring in the theaters Del Rey and Houghton Mifflin rereleased the Lord of the Rings trilogy in hardcover, mass market, and trade paperback editions with photo covers of images taken from the film. This autumn, to coincide with the upcoming film release of The Two Towers Del Rey and Houghton Mifflin rereleased the Lord of the Rings trilogy in mass market and trade paperback, this time with photo images taken presumably from The Two Towers.

Why?

For those people who didn’t buy the trilogy in one form or another in the last year, weren’t last year’s photo covers sufficient? Do we really need another release of the trilogy with different cover images? You can find readily in bookstores pre-2001 releases, last year’s release, and this year’s release of the trilogy. Three different covers of each book vying for shelf space in bookstores.

Maybe it’s good marketing. But there’s an air of pointlessness about the whole exercise.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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