Antiques Road Show often shares good tips for collectors. One such tip, broadcast about a year ago, led to a lover of books who has set up a small company that produces and sells reproductions of classic book covers. It’s a wonderful way to protect your historic bound books.
Here’s a link to the section of his site devoted to George R. Stewart books: http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/4127.html
You can easily get to the main page of the site from the Earth Abides/ GRS section.
Some collectors have mixed feelings about using such reproduction covers, fearing that they might be used as forgeries, or because of copyright concerns. But the scholar who runs the company is careful to note on each cover that it is a facsimile, so these covers cannot be used as forgeries; and none of these covers have been produced or used for several decades — the books have been updated with new covers several times — so there will be no loss of income to publisher or author or agent through the use of these older covers for your old books.
Mark Terry, the artist/scholar who is keeping these beautiful covers alive, has many more covers than the 9,000 on the site — 40,000 now — so if you’re interested, send a request through his site.
Even if you have an original cover — and I’m luck to have two for my first editions/first printings of Earth Abides — a facsimile cover is a good way to protect those valuable books.
the EARTH ABIDES project 