Having found a couple of authors where two of their titles are linked by the cover artwork I’m wondering if there are any more? I know some of the PAN/Ballantine’s (all titles will be added eventually) have the artwork from the front of one on the back of another plus the Julian May panoramas. I’ve put a couple of examples HERE although I had to fiddle the Tevis covers to line up by taking a bit off the top of one and a bit of the bottom of the other but no such problem with the Harris. I’ve emailed Paul Roberts, the artist who painted ‘Bodyguard 2’ used for the Thomas Kyd covers, but no reply so far.
Just because I have them to hand I’ve put the three Robert Rankin titles in the ‘Brentford Trilogy’ on a page. Not sure why they all had to have so disparate covers and did Rankin have a falling out with PAN in that they didn’t publish any of his later titles of which there are nine in this series?
Sometimes I look at something and wonder ‘Why’, is this art or just a way to spoil a good book? If you are keen to have something like this by Dave Buonaguidi you’ll need to outbid the current one of £50!
I can shed some light on your Robert Rankin query…I published the Trilogy at Pan, thanks to some prompting from Alan Aldridge. I can no longer remember why the covers were so different, but I suspect No.1 didn’t sell so they thought they’d try a different approach for No.2. I’d left Pan by the time No.3 came out. You’d have to ask David Larkin or Gary Day-Ellison what the story was.
After a couple of years at Chatto I then moved on to Sphere/Abacus. I kept in touch with Robert, and nothing much was happening for him at Pan, so I published the Trilogy again, in one volume this time, plus No.4, The Sprouts of Wrath.
I then moved to Bloomsbury, where I published Armageddon: The Musical, They Came and Ate Us and The Suburban Book of the Dead. These were picked up in paperback by Corgi, who subsequently republished his backlist and became his primary publishers. I can’t remember how that happened, but ££ probably had something to do with it.
Nice to hear from you again Mike and your insights into the workings of PAN. In case your comment gets missed I’ve included it in next Monday’s blog. Thanks again, keep in touch, Tim