The be-more-awesome website and magazine Bookninja is holding a contest: who can most successfully rebrand a well-known book by redesigning its cover to make it look like a genre book? Here’s how the official call for entries read:

…So take your favourite literary novelist and “rebrand” one of their titles to appeal to more popular sectors: chicklit, thriller, romance, scifi/fantasy, celebrity kids book, etc.

The contest is in its last stage: the finalists have been selected. The entries are so funny–done, we gather, by professionals and amateurs alike–and even if you’ve not read a given book, the title in its new jacket can make for an arresting juxtaposition.Speaking of juxtaposition, let’s do a side-by-side of a handful of the re-designed finalists against their original covers, so that you, kind reader, can weigh in and help us decide if this whole “re-branding” obsession is anything to pay any attention to, or, alternatively, if you think book publishers don’t have much idea at all about marketing their books, and will likely never learn.

Let’s start with one that’s widely read in high schools (and very widely used on the SAT in the old reading comprehension passages) and see how it could, perhaps, come to the attention of even more American teenagers:

See? Reading is FUN, right? Let’s try another classic:

The blurbs on the new covers are part of what makes them weird and perfect–and, let’s face it, good or no, blurbs are only receiving more and better real estate as we move along. Now, if Kerouac really had written a one-off novel about hitchhiking on the Death Star … that would’ve made some serious money. (And, as it is, anyone who’s paid any attention knows that George Lucas drew heavily on the work of Kerouac, and that Han Solo is at his core a simile of Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassady).

Let’s try another road-related title:

Once again, the blurb makes it all happen. Check out the Bookninja contest for more quirky perversions of books. As ever: reading is fun; and not only fun, but good for you.