Covers and how to appeal to all audiences

Covers differ from country to country. In printed books, the same book has many different covers all over the world. The different covers we see regularly is between US and UK covers. 

In South Africa we have traditionally mostly seen UK covers, but we are being exposed to US covers more an more because of ebooks and Amazon. In my course at Oxford Brookes we did a whole section on the difference between the two, but this is all changing now. How does a publisher appeal to both audiences now that we have ebooks?

So, which covers do you prefer? 

US vs UK

From The Millions

US vs UK

From Wondrous Reads

US vs UK

From Flavorwire

And would you ever go for a Japanese cover?

 Game of Thrones

 Twilight

1Q84

Thanks Litreactor for this comic relief (especially the Twilight one). 

Fan fiction. Why?

Fan fiction. Why? 

When I was a kid, I read Narnia over and over and I played in that world and imagined myself as the fifth Pevensie kid... And this is true of a few other books too. So I understand  why you might write fan fiction - that you might want to immerse yourself into a world further. 

What is fan fiction? Briefly, it's writing a 'new' story within an already created world. 

But my question is, why would anyone read it? Why is it so big? As someone who just can't stay ahead with my reading list, who always has at least 10 'real' books lined up to read, I just don't get it. 

On one platform, Wattpad one story set in the Hunger Games world, Pregnant in the Hunger Games (yes, I kid you not), has been read 992 000 times!! Almost a million times! 

One of the biggest fan fiction worlds is Harry Potter. On Fanfiction.net  there are over 657 000 stories and on Harry Potter's Fanfiction site there are over 80 000 stories and this site gets over 30 million hits a month… The top read story has been read 1 585 108 times! This particular story is set in the next generation - i.e. the Potter and Weasly kids are the main characters. 

So, clearly this is something massive. My question though, is why? Will someone explain it to me please?  

But as always, if it gets people reading, what's wrong with that?