If you try to purchase the Wuthering Heights novel on Amazon this year, you may wonder whether you have accidentally wandered into a DVD section. The film tie-in edition—a reissued book with a cover featuring art, photos or branding connected to the movie or television adaptation—dedicates two-thirds of the cover to Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi swooning over each other in a scene from Emerald Fennell’s eponymous adaptation, which came out in February this year. The title sits in lacy pink lettering inside quotation marks. Emily Brontë’s name is tucked to one side. Funnily enough, it is exactly the same size as the “Now a major motion picture” sticker emblazoned on the other side.
Nothing about it makes me think of Yorkshire, cruelty or ghosts at the window. At best, it says date night.
And so I find myself wondering: who is this movie-poster book-cover really for? It cannot be the person with three hardback Brontës on their shelf. “For readers already invested in a book, the original cover holds a special place,” Ditsha Gupta, assistant Manager at Penguin Random House India, agrees. “Film tie-in editions, however,” she explains, “serve a different, but equally important purpose: they introduce books to new audiences.” Someone who has watched a film may not necessarily know it was adapted from a book. A familiar face closes that gap. “Whether they spot it at an airport bookstore, in a supermarket or while browsing Amazon, that familiarity can nudge them to pick up the book,” Gupta says. She does not see a contest between tie-ins and original book covers. For her, the two covers speak to different audiences.
Devnagana Dash, an independent art director and book designer, is less patient when she clocks that an original book cover has been swapped out for a movie poster. Still, she calls it a “calculated business move.” In a culture where celebrities are “virtually, and even practically, worshipped, doing a tie-in book jacket is an effective strategy to make the title instantly popular and recognisable to a broader audience.”
The turnoff is understandable. As a person who has spent the better part of her life with her nose buried in a book, tie-in covers—especially those where the motive is business and not beauty—can feel like heartburn. But I also recognise that we are in a reading recession, and so I’d rather have someone reach for a 400-page Victorian-era gothic novel simply because Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi look wildly good on the cover than not have them add it to their TBR pile at all.
