UK publisher Hodder to republish 50 SK books

[mae]

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/hodder-reanimates-stephen-king-backlist.html


Hodder is rolling out a new backlist look for one of its supernatural and thriller stars, Stephen King. The publisher will be re-issuing his backlist, including titles written by his alter-ego, Richard Bachman.

The transformation kicks off in May, with 50 titles being issued as £7.99, B-format paperbacks in nine groups according to genre. Each grouping will have its own theme, colour scheme, and title lettering style. Seven thrillers, such as Cell, Dreamcatcher and Insomnia will be released in May, followed by five of King's suspense novels, including Dolores Claiborne and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, in July.

In August, his "reading group" novels will be released, followed by five of his "chillers" in October, including The Dead Zone and Carrie, and a further five in November, including The Shining.

In January 2012, his short-story collections will be released, including Different Seasons, from which came the films "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand By Me". March, May and July 2012 will see his non-fiction, Dark Tower series, and Richard Bachman books released respectively.

King's British editor Philippa Pride said: "We are really excited about this new programme and hope that we'll entice people who love the films 'The Shawshank Redemption', 'Stand By Me' and 'Misery' to read the original books, to hook a new generation of readers, and to re-introduce readers who read Stephen King in their teens to the amazing range and literary power of his work."

The author lettering on the covers is the same as that used for his most recent novels Under the Dome and Full Dark, No Stars, which are the only titles to not yet receive this treatment, though Pride said it "will happen in due course".

On deciding on the groupings, Pride said: "It was like planning seating at a dinner party originally, what goes with what. We played about with it until we felt this was the strongest of the groupings."

The titles will have identifying symbols and spine lettering to further place them in a grouping. Pride added: "The intention was always to point the reader in the right direction. I think it's quite exciting, I'm currently working on the website as well as with marketing. We are giving readers new and exciting routes [into his work]."

Just a small pic for now: http://www.thebookseller.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/news_page/stephen.jpg

[Brainslinger]

MM. Not a bad idea, as all his work tends to get lumbered in the Horror section in the book stores.

Mind you, I bet that'll still happen anyway. Not that I'm complaining, I like King's work in one section, but for the POV of pulling in new readers that aren't into horror, this could be detrimental.

[Ben Staad]

MM. Not a bad idea, as all his work tends to get lumbered in the Horror section in the book stores.

Mind you, I bet that'll still happen anyway. Not that I'm complaining, I like King's work in one section, but for the POV of pulling in new readers that aren't into horror, this could be detrimental.

Whoa..your book stores have a horror section? The only place I have to shop puts SK in fiction and jumbles some horror folks into the Sci-fi/Fantasy section.:orely:

[lordmerchant]

Almost all bookshops I go to here in UK (Waterstones, WH Smith's etc) ALWAYS have King in the horror section. Hopefully with the addition of these "groupings" the belief that Stephen King is a horror writer might be dispelled....although I doubt it.

[God]

Merge

[Shannon]

Hey guys, sorry if this has been posted before, but was cruising around eBay and a set of new (to me, anyway) paperbacks caught my eye. I'm a sucker for mini-collections (the Stephen King Horror Library, the Stephen King Library, the Pocket Books subset, the Holdorf books, etc), so I did some research. Apparently starting last May and continuing on until they are done, Hodder will rerelease Stephen King's books as cheap paperbacks with new covers. The order of release is due to how the books are "grouped". Similiar books go with each other. I am posting the covers below. I think I found them all so far. Just wanted to share.

Released May 12, 2011: "Epic Thrillers"


http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8977/otherhoddercell.th.jpg http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5598/otherhodderdesperation.th.jpg http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3600/otherhodderdreamcatcher.th.jpg http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/3707/otherhodderinsomnia.th.jpg http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8801/otherhodderit.th.jpg http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/8706/otherhodderneedfulthing.th.jpg http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/292/otherhodderthestand.th.jpg


Released July 7, 2011: "Thrilling Suspense"


http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9844/otherhodderdoloresclaib.th.jpg http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/7397/sgame.th.jpg http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/3679/otherhoddergirlwholoved.th.jpg http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/8368/otherhoddermisery.th.jpg http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8525/otherhodderrosemadder.th.jpg


Released August 4, 2011: "Powerful Suspense"


http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/8094/otherhodderbagofbones.th.jpg http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/5866/otherhodderdumakey.th.jpg http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/5825/otherhodderheartsinatla.th.jpg http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/7648/sstory.th.jpg


Released October 13, 2011: "Chilling Classics"


http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/139/otherhoddercarrie.th.jpg http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5852/otherhodderchristine.th.jpg http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/6211/otherhodderthedeadzone.th.jpg http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/9061/otherhodderfirestarter.th.jpg http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7797/otherhodderfromabuick8.th.jpg


Released November 10, 2011: "Iconic Terror"


http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/1759/otherhoddercujo.th.jpg http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/3080/otherhodderdarkhalf.th.jpg http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/6430/otherhodderpetsematary.th.jpg http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5393/slotw.th.jpg http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/451/otherhoddershining.th.jpg

[Brice]

Wow, god has the power to merge? :P


Yup, i am soooooo going to hell. :onfire:

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

Hodder does this every 5 years.

[Shannon]

Hodder does seem to be the king of "I have a great idea! Let's put a new cover on it!" lol

But I'm a sucker, I'll bite. I like the way they look. The only problem is these damn UK books come from ... the UK! Shipping, ugh!

[frik]

I'm glad these are paperbacks! If they would have been HC editions, I might have gone for the works!

sk

[biomieg]

They look quite nice but I think the concept of grouping titles in artifical categories like 'Chilling Classics' is flawed. What the heck is the difference between 'Powerful Suspense' and 'Thrilling Suspense'? I'd rather decide for myself.

I will not buy them, I have one paperback collection and that's enough.

[Shannon]

Yeah, the groupings seemed a little off to me also. While I was looking, I found even MORE collections last night! One of them are paperbacks (and some hardcover, which I have to look into) with the same style of writing for Stephen King's name. "Stephen" is all in lowercase, and King is all uppercase. Let's see if I can upload a pic to show you what I'm talking about:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/1889/otherlittlestephenpaper.jpg

and THEN I found another Dark Tower collection with the same type of font used for the lettering and a picture of the tower, getting closer and closer, here's that one:

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9486/othergoldendtgunslinger.th.jpg http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/9780/othergoldendtdrawingoft.th.jpg http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/5480/othergoldendtwastelands.th.jpg http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/2172/othergoldendtwizardandg.th.jpg http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/394/othergoldendtwolvesofth.th.jpg http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/1867/othergoldendtsongofsusa.th.jpg http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7131/othergoldendtdarktower.th.jpg

Oh wow, I just realized that they aren't the same ... Hmmm ... Oh well, still nice.

[biomieg]

Funny you should mention those. I really love the series that contains the version of THE DARK HALF you showed and in fact, that's the paperback collection I was referring to. I have all of them (check my collection thread). Unfortunately, not all King's books were issued in this format and some of them (EYES OF THE DRAGON, DIFFERENT SEASONS and a couple of others) were issued with a similar but slightly different (and inferior, IMO) layout.

I also have the DT paperbacks. If you want to get those, be aware that there are both trade and mass-market paperback versions of them.

[Shannon]

It is quite a pain in the ass discovering all these subcollections. Some will LOOK similar, and then I will find differences. Some will be paperback, some hardcover ... it's very odd. See examples:

One hardcover, one paperback, with different writing:
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/8373/otherlittlestephenhardc.jpg http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1889/otherlittlestephenpaper.jpg

One hardcover, one paperback with different writing:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9905/otherelusivedthardcover.jpg http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/394/othergoldendtwolvesofth.jpg

Different font/covers:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1889/otherlittlestephenpaper.jpg http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/1889/otherlittlestephenpaper.jpg

[DoctorDodge]

and THEN I found another Dark Tower collection with the same type of font used for the lettering and a picture of the tower, getting closer and closer, here's that one:

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9486/othergoldendtgunslinger.th.jpg http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/9780/othergoldendtdrawingoft.th.jpg http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/5480/othergoldendtwastelands.th.jpg http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/2172/othergoldendtwizardandg.th.jpg http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/394/othergoldendtwolvesofth.th.jpg http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/1867/othergoldendtsongofsusa.th.jpg http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7131/othergoldendtdarktower.th.jpg

Oh wow, I just realized that they aren't the same ... Hmmm ... Oh well, still nice.

Actually, those last 3 hardcovers are the only example I have of buying books to "collect" rather than just for reading. Then again, the trade paperbacks had really ugly covers with a terrible colour scheme, did not go with the UK paperbacks of the first 4 novels I had bought at all. I was so glad that I didn't have to wait for the paperback of the final volume though when I found one hardcover in the shop...until I found that over 30 pages were missing about a couple of chapters in!!! And that was the only one I could find! "WTF?!?" did not do my reaction justice! So I waited for the paperback, instead. Not the mass-market one with the same cover, but the trade one with the ugly cover. Wasn't too happy. Never was, until I got my UK hardcover off ebay during a re-read of the series. Then I thought, "you know what, I might as well get the other 2 UK hardbacks if they're cheap enough", which I did. After all, they were really cool covers! It's what drew me to the series, actually: the cover scheme of having the Tower get closer and closer with every volume. And the fact that the first one was so short, a real bonus for a slow reader like me! :lol:

[Brice]

Because of you, after all these years i just realized the tower gets progressively closer on the Hodder covers. :doh:

[Shannon]

LOL! It's ok Brice, some people just don't get things so obvious. :)

[Brice]

:lol:

[Brainslinger]

Because of you, after all these years i just realized the tower gets progressively closer on the Hodder covers. :doh:

Um... yeah. Me too. And I own the last three!

Only the last three though mind, so I guess it's easy enough to miss with just three novels. That and I usually take one of the book case at the time.

My DT series are pretty disparate. Books 1-5 in paperback (mainly as I bought them after they'd all been published. To be fair I think those are by the same publisher as the art style is similar) the last three as hard backs as I bought them as they came out and wouldn't wait for the paperbacks. :)

I've never been all that fussed about having a uniform collection. I actually quite like the fact they're a bit of a mess lined up on the shelf. Heh.

Those covers posted above are very nice though.

[noal]

My DT series are pretty disparate. Books 1-5 in paperback (mainly as I bought them after they'd all been published. To be fair I think those are by the same publisher as the art style is similar) the last three as hard backs as I bought them as they came out and wouldn't wait for the paperbacks. :)

I've never been all that fussed about having a uniform collection. I actually quite like the fact they're a bit of a mess lined up on the shelf. Heh.

Those covers posted above are very nice though.

Whereas I like a nice uniform collection.
I have the UK paperbacks in a nice uniform row.
What annoys me is the fact that it wasn't long ago that a new design was introduced.

http://www0.alibris-static.com/isbn/9780340951446.gif

I started to try to get a nice little collection going but they still haven't done UTD yet, except for the 'face' covers, whereas I currently have the hardback 'blue' cover.

And now there is another!:angry::angry:

[pixiedark76]

Hodder does seem to be the king of "I have a great idea! Let's put a new cover on it!" lol

But I'm a sucker, I'll bite. I like the way they look. The only problem is these damn UK books come from ... the UK! Shipping, ugh!

I totally agree! Plus you have to figure out the price in American currency! Amazon.com UK is a good place to order Stephen King books.