[galaga99]

Hi. I was wondering if anyone else out there shares my fascination with Del Rey paperbacks. I love them. The cover art is often better than other books, the color is brighter. I might be biased, having loved the Xanth books as a teen, plus the Incarnations of Imm. series by the same author (Anthony). Also the Belgariad and Mallorean by Eddings were by Del Rey. I look for the Del Rey on the spine when I am browsing in a used boookstore, etc. Sometimes I get duplicates, but I don't care. I think there is something unique about them. Let me know if I am not alone!

[DarthV]

Talk about judging a book by the cover! Errr or spine...whichever works.

I could really care less about what the cover/spine looks like. My number one concern would be whether I'd enjoy the book or not. Second, if any, would be how solid the books is. Sometimes you can tell if a book will fall apart before you finish reading it.

[Warewolf]

Now, while I would never buy a book simply because it was published by a particular company, there are a few publishers that, if I see a new author from them, I will pick up and see if they seem interesting to me. I have had lots of luck with Tor, DAW (the covers to Rawn's and Williams' books (almost always by Michael Whelan) are always beautiful), and, yes, Del Rey. IMHO, these are the big guns of the industry (no, I am not forgetting Eos or Bantam Spectra or any others...), but that is due to the quality of the stories they put out rather than the quality of the books themselves. To me, the books' physical quality seems pretty standard across publishers...they all have good and not so good cover artists, but the way the books are put together seem pretty uniform. Thus, while I might tend to gravitate towards certain publishers that I've enjoyed stuff from in the past, it is the story and not the publisher that determine whether or not I pick up the book.