It seems that Pengin are ‘getting back to basics’ with their nostalgic retro looking book covers. Hailed as being a bit of a marketing ploy, it seems that the $9.95 price tag is very attractive indeed. Interestingly, the production cost of a cover hardly equates to the sensational reduction in price these books are being offered for, so it’s got to mean more.
Apparently, there is a subliminal message that these brightly coloured orange and cream books send out to the reading public and that is – ‘if they are published in this way, then they have to be alright’. Peter Blake who is the company’s Australian sales director who launched the concept says, “Even if you’ve not heard of Geoffrey Robertson’s Crimes Against Humanity you think, ‘It’s part of the collection, I trust the brand and it’s surrounded by all these other classics by authors like Waugh or Fitzgerald so it must be OK.’”
