SWEDISH COVERS

Update:

This blog is now dormant and has moved with all the old posts and many new ones to Crime Scraps Review at http://crimescraps2.wordpress.com.

Please come one over.

Barbara Fister, whose website Scandinavian Crime Fiction in English and her companion blog have become excellent resources, commented on my recent follow up post on the arguments over female crime writers in Sweden that 'it would be interesting to see how Sjowall and Wahloo were marketed'.

Above are the covers of a 30 year old Penguin edition of Polismordaren, Cop Killer by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and a recent Swedish edition of Prime Time by Liza Marklund.

You don't need to be in the publishing industry, or a graphic designer, to note the huge change in emphasis away from the story and the detective to concentrate on the author.

The books title has become secondary in the marketing of the Marklund novel, while the authors Sjowall and Wahloo are tertiary to the information conveyed in the title and the name of the detective in the 1978 book.