When people purchase a book, other than content, book cover is one of the major factors affect their decisions. Targeting this situation, adding different covers for the same book has become a fruitful strategy for book marketers.

For example, Fourth Estate’s new book has two different covers: one black and the other white. Other publishers such as Canongate also design multiple covers for their published books to attract more readers.

The new book by Stephen King, "Under the Dome", has five paperback versions with different book covers made by its publishing house. Although adding extra cover design costs more, Lucy Hull the person in charge of marketing thinks it still worth a try. Even these five versions didn’t make significant improvement to the selling figures so far, she has faith it will work out in a long run by converting potential readers to Stephen King’s book’s fans in the future.

This strategy is now accepted by many bookstores. For instance, British bookstore Waterstone has put all five versions of "Under the Dome" paperback onto its book shelf to attract readers’ attention. Many other publishers are considering adopting this strategy as well. Mrs. Hull told the media that Amazon bought all five versions, but they will randomly choose one send to customers when they make the purchase. Thus compared to online bookstores, local bookstores take the advantage of displaying on the shelf and better visual impression.

The big name publishing house – Penguin adopted this single book multiple cover marketing strategy, too. For example, "Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) has four different covers. One of Penguin’s publisher staff said: "Penguin always pays huge attention to book cover design, especially for the books in Penguin Classics. Because people are familiar with the content of these books, a good and high quality cover design therefore is more important. Public domain books can be published by any publishing house. The key to make Penguin’s success is that we are making the design with our hearts."