Wolverine Publicity / Literature

• Cross-promotion. Aside from the common example of "story in book by the author of popular book ", there's when older books get hijacked by adaptations into other media. One example: All of Arthur C. Clarke's books getting reissues whose covers depicted spaceships from the then-recent film 2001: A Space Odyssey... Including Tales From The White Hart, which didn't even HAVE spaceships.
• The original cover art for the Alex Rider prequel Russian Roulette had the series logo, but was otherwise marked as a separate entity from the series itself. Later reprints numbered it as the tenth book in the series, prominently added the series name, and the cover art was of the one and only scene in the book in which Alex appears (which is not even a new scene, but a Once More, with Clarity reprise of the ending of the first book in the series).
• Roger McBride Allen wrote three novels^note Caliban, Inferno, and Utopia that take place in the same Universe as Isaac Asimov's Robot series. Asimov's name is so large on the cover of these books that you could be forgiven for thinking he wrote them.
• The sixth edition of Broadway Musicals Show By Show contains Wicked, Hairspray, and Jersey Boys on the cover because they were some of the biggest musicals when the edition came out. However, those musicals are given bare minimum synopsis' with little-to-no historical information, and the latter two don't even have photographs in the book.
• Cthulhu Mythos:
  • Cthulhu himself. In the original works of H. P. Lovecraft, he appeared only once, in "The Call of Cthulhu", but has since come to be adopted as the symbol of Lovecraft, no doubt due to the work of Lovecraft's "protege", August Derleth, who did more than anyone else to help keep Lovecraft's writings in print after his death and also basically created (and certainly named) the Cthulhu Mythos. Most of the core ideas that people today would describe as being part of the "Cthulhu Mythos" come not from Lovecraft at all, but Derleth's later imitative stories.
  • Same applies to all of the Old Ones, really. The only Lovecraftian god that actually plays a prominent role in more than a couple of stories is Nyarlahothep. Yog-Sothoth often has a fairly important role, but usually he's just invoked in spells, rather than making an actual appearance. Azathoth gets mentioned a lot too, but never actually appears in any of Lovecraft's stories.
  • Of course, none of this stopped Lovecraft from mentioning Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Azathoth and the Old Ones in general every chance he got, regardless of relevance to the story at hand. The moment someone mentions the Necronomicon, or starts muttering about other old books, or gives any sort of long expository speech, you have a fairly safe bet some of the big names will pop up.
  • Independent writers and fans seem to focus their attention on Hastur, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep. The reason seems to mainly be that Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and other Outer Gods are fun setpieces, but not exactly characters. Nyarlathotep, on the other hand, is actively malevolent toward humanity, while Yog-Sothoth at least interacts with us on a regular basis (whether it be chatting with dreamers, impregnating albino women or being invoked in spells), and finally Hastur has the benefit of an incredibly iconic (maybe) avatar, in the King in Yellow.
• This trope got an author acknowledgement in regards to the Discworld universe. After a few Ankh-Morpork/City Watch books, Sir Terry Pratchett got away from them for a while. When asked, he admitted that when he wrote Ankh-Morpork books, the City Watch took over, and when the City Watch took over, Sam Vimes took over.
• Mark Tavener's novel In the Red is a comedy thriller starring a BBC journalist, which features minor roles by the unnamed Head of Radio 2 and Head of Radio 4. When it was adapted for BBC radio, these roles were played by Stephen Fry and John Bird, who reprised them in the BBC TV adaptation. These devious figures became Breakout Characters in Tavener's radio spin-off Absolute Power (BBC), at which time the TV tie-in of the book duly had a photo cover of Fry and Bird◊, with no sign of Warren Clarke, who played the main character, at all.
• As noted below in Magazines, Rush Limbaugh is sometimes used for Wolverine Publicity, and Limbaugh claims it's no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations sold significantly more copies than Al Franken's other books.
• The Star Wars Legends short story anthology Tales From The Empire features Boba Fett and his Slave One on the cover, but the bounty hunter isn't involved in any of the stories within. There is a novella featuring Jodo Kast, who wears similar Mandalorian armor, but even In-Universe Kast is considered a Fett wannabe. And the guy in the armor is actually Grand Admiral Thrawn up to one of his schemes.
• Then there are things like "Tom Clancy's Op-Center," where Clancy's name is often the biggest thing on the cover even though he didn't actually write the series. He's credited as "creator", which usually means coming up with the core setting concepts, and leaving them to be fleshed out by other creators.
  • This is a common publishing phenomenon wherein a bestselling author's name is placed prominently on the front cover to attract the sales that author normally generates, wherein his or her contribution may have been limited to an idea or an outline at most. Generally speaking, if a best-selling author's name appears on the cover in massive print followed by the name(s) of another author you've never even heard of in smaller letters, this trope's in play.
  • This is especially true for those who Died During Production; usually, whomever is finishing their work, or writing in the style of that person, gets their own name printed on the cover in a much smaller, less noticeable typeface.
• In the wake of The Twilight Saga, we're being inundated with reissued classic romances such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Romeo and Juliet — all featuring black covers with close-up pictures of something red (usually a rose) and a very familiar typeface. In the case of the relatively short Romeo and Juliet, the typeface has been blown up to a ridiculous point size to inflate the page count to more closely match the Twilight readin' experience. (Nothing wrong with the last one, though; no matter your reading level, it's always nice not to have to squint.) Then there's the Wuthering Heights editions with not only the aforementioned cover art but also plastered with a huge sticker that says "EDWARD AND BELLA'S FAVORITE BOOK!"
• Wild Cards, which is a series of books written by dozens of different authors set in the same universe, was edited by George R. R. Martin. After Song of Fire and Ice started becoming popular the Wild Card books started featuring his name more and more prominently over the actual authors' names. Then when Game of Thrones started airing some printings and online book stores went as far as giving him top author credit.

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