Why aren't there more editions of this?

[Dominique]

I've seen other classics, like Alice in Wonderland and The Great Gatsby have many differant editions. There will always be new cover art on them, whether they're illustrations or photos. But, why hasn't Catcher in the Rye gotten any recently? Now, I've seen some illustrated covers of it on the Internet, and you can see an interesting one with Holden & Phoebe on the TVTropes page, but they're all obviously out-of-print by now. And to this day, the only two commonly well-known editions are the original with a red carousel horse and New York City on the bottom left, and a plain white cover with a tiny color pattern on the bottom.
Is this all because Salinger didn't want his book to be adapted into a movie or something?

[Scott]

Somehow the plain cover (which used to be maroon color) became iconic and stuck.

[Brolie]

Yeah, this book does not need a flashy cover to get readers.

[Dominique]

Scott wrote: "Somehow the plain cover (which used to be maroon color) became iconic and stuck."
Oh, right, I also remembering seeing another old edition in the school library: it was a red hardcover with a golden title.
Brolie wrote: "Yeah, this book does not need a flashy cover to get readers."
I see what you mean; still, I wish there would be a new cover, like a black-and-white photograph showing Holden wearing his hunting hat and looking off to the side in the snowy outdoors.

[Scott]

This is the one I had in the 80s and am most familiar with:



But I know the white one with the colored stripes has been around for a while now.

Franny & Zooey has a plain cover too.

[Vinton]

I would assume that this book, like the rest of Salinger's, is still under the original copyright, so other editions are not possible without permission.

[Scott]

The publisher could still redesign the cover. I think the original poster is just asking why that's happened so infrequently.

[Vinton]

Oh. The phrase "more editions" seemed to imply many different versions, as with Thomas Mann's books or Charles Dickens'.

Often, with a classic, especially books that became classic during the mid-20th century, the covers become more or less "locked." A great example is The Great Gatsby and that iconic blue cover. While there have been other covers over the years, the publisher keeps going back to the original. A truly iconic cover can become as much a part of a book as its title.

This is especially true of books like Salinger's and Fitzgerald's that are sold primarily to schools. But not changing the cover, the book is more readily identifiable and different copies bought at different times are still completely uniform.