| An
interesting practice used by some publishers was to take the cover art
from one book and "recycle" it for use on another.
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.

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 date (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" and "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.
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).
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 November, 2011 |