Have Zombies Will Travel

I suckered you in on the title right? Well I couldn't help it. Sorry I've been out of pocket and was slow about returning comments but I'm back. So World's Greatest Hubby is a couple thousand miles away and the twins are away also. That left me and the 10 yr old to find as much trouble to get into as possible. Can you say ROAD TRIP. (that's the travel part)

The closest major bookstore is around 80 miles away so we set off this morning to spend the day smelling leather, acid free paper and caffeine. While we stalked the isles a fantastic thought popped into my head. I need to spy. No not really. Although I swear I would have been the best CIA agent around. I needed to listen politely to the innocent people strolling the store.

Cue spy music.

I wanted to hear what they had to say about the authors. I needed to see what they reached for first. The books turned out or the ones you could only see their spines. Did they even bother to look at the ones on the bottom shelf? And where the heck where the zombie books the 10 yr old was looking for? (that's the zombie part) What I heard was shocking. Ok maybe not shocking but certainly interesting.

Two older gentlemen having a conversation as I pretended to read "1001 Uses for Pork Fat".

G1: "I hate that."
G2: "What?"
G1: "When they change book jackets on you."
G2: "Huh?"
G1: " This is the second book this has happened with. I bought this one about 3 months ago and the front looked different. I picked this one up thinking it was a sequel and its the same book but they changed the jacket. This has happened to me twice now and both times with the same author."

At that moment I was totally confused and almost dropped my cover but my spybilities (real word honest ;) kicked in. Do publishers really change the cover art? I figured they might do that for re-releases but these guys where talking about books still in the stores. Have you ever heard of this? Is this something I have just overlooked? I know they do it with books made into movies. Do I see a sparkly vamp? But this was not one of those.

On a side note I worked a little good karma for new writers. When I wasn't spying I looked for first time authors and moved their books outward so maybe people would notice them first. Nothing wrong with returning to favorite authors. I do it all the time. However today I wanted to give the newbies a little boost if I could.

Oh and I picked up "Dead Beautiful" by Yvonne Woon. The cover is gorgeous!!!

Do you know of publishers changing cover art on books still in print? Do you think this guy had one too many vitamins and was talking crazy?