http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/b...t-fans-classic-books-get-bold-looks.htmlTo Lure ‘Twilight’ Teenagers, Classic Books Get Bold Looks
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: June 27, 2012
Teenagers are still reading the classics. They just don’t want them to look so, well, classic.
That is the theory of publishers who are wrapping books like “Emma” and “Jane Eyre” in new covers: provocative, modern jackets in bold shades of scarlet and lime green that are explicitly aimed at teenagers raised on “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games.”
The new versions are cutting edge replacements for the traditional (read: stuffy, boring) covers that have been a trademark of the classics for decades, those familiar, dour depictions of women wearing frilly clothing. In their place are images like the one of Romeo in stubble and a tight white tank top on a new Penguin edition of “Romeo and Juliet.”
The covers are intended to tap into the soaring popularity of the young-adult genre, the most robustly growing category in publishing. In the last decade, publishers have poured energy and resources into books for teenagers, releasing more titles each year. Bookstores have followed suit, creating and expanding spe-cial sections devoted to them.
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Sales of some young-adult versions have been strong. The HarperCollins edition of “Wuthering Heights” has sold 125,000 copies since it was released in 2009, an extraordinary number that sent the book back to the best-seller lists.
Because titles like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Persuasion” are in the public domain, any publisher can release a version, leaving the text inside the books untouched while redesigning the cover. And for the young-adult reader, publishers are scooping up all the material they can find.
Now the new versions of the classics are fighting for space on the young-adult shelves of bookstores. In a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan last week, a display featured four new editions of novels by Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters alongside more contemporary offerings of paranormal romances. (Upstairs in the adult-fiction section, more traditional versions of the classics were lined up on the shelves.)
At the Book Revue bookstore in Huntington, N.Y., new versions of the classics have sold briskly, surprising the store’s owner, Julie Klein.
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If I can get my kids to read good literature by buying books with cool covers, I will. Once you've spent money on summer camps and private lessons, books seem pretty cheap.
