twins

In this section, you'll see instances in which magazine art was also used for paperback cover illustration. Keep in mind that early paperback publishing houses were often offshoots of pulp magazine empires.

I have NOT included reprints of the same book that carried over the artwork from the original.

In a few cases, the artwork was reversed, and sometimes altered, but it had obviously been duplicated.

---NOTE---

Click the thumbnail and read the web address to identify the book or mag from which the image was taken. Magazines are identified YEAR FIRST, then month, then day (if applicable).

Let's try it with the images below. The web address, all the way at the end ... just before the ".jpg" ... will give the mag's title, such as "cavalierclassics" or "arogosyweekly" plus the numbers:

194011 19381022

November 1940 October 22, 1938

Many thanks to Bob Gaines, whose eagle-eye has spotted many of these books just from browsing the BookScans web site. He has also spotted most of the pulp magazine twins around the internet.

Men's Action Magazines

In some of cases, you might find it difficult to see the "matches," even when the covers are displayed side-by-side. Men's magazines from the 1960's often displayed two, three, four or even more pictures on the cover, so that a "set" of TWINS displayed in BookScans might contain more than one illustration.

A Word about US/Non-US Covers:

It was a very common practice for publishers outside the United States to not only reprint an American literary work, but to use the same cover image. Generally, authors and artists were not paid a dime in royalties. It remains an open question as to whether U.S. publishers gave any consent or sold any rights. The covers were almost never actually copied (i.e., photocopied) ... they were reproduced by other artists, some with much more detail than others, as seen in the three images above. Note also that the center book is not the same novel (or even the same author).

AND ... it certainly didn't go only one-way across the pond. Bibliographer Kenneth R. Johnson has found multiple instances of U.S. publishers using original German cover art. Read his comments about that by clicking his link at the bottom left.

Attribution:

I have credited the scans in this section to the people who found the twins, not necessarily the people who contributed the scans in the first place. In many cases, especially those containing pulp magazine "twins," the images were gleaned from the far corners of the World Wide Web. It takes a special talent to be able to spot these things and then find the match. I wish I had it.

Updated December, 2012