I grew up with an Asian family but in a western community, so I pronounce both kinds of words accordingly. Holo and Horo going by western pronounciations are both wrong, so seeing either won't bother me too much.

Also, I'm pretty sure light novels don't do that well in the west because they aren't a great number of widely available translated material. Japanese style manga nowadays sell better than Western style comic books, so won't keeping the original covers be a better business choice?

People sometimes underestimate the niche market of anime, anyway..

There are a _lot_ of borderline, non diehard anime fans who may still not know who Haruhi is, but just kind of take a second look at anything anime-like because it's anime-like, even if they know or own rather little of it.

These are the sort of people who's eyes easily bypass the generic porn novel look of this new cover, but would have looked at the original cover, and probably either recognized it for what it was, or just given it a chance.

So while actual 'anime fans' may be smaller in scope, there's still a lot of people who actually would have been intrigued a bit by the original cover as opposed to turned off.

Trust me, I know the type, and they're everywhere.

Anyway, the whole issue really is sad.. One of the reasons why fans of something buy the localizations of media they like is just to have it on their shelves, as these days subs/translations/piracy are so fast and easy that they've probably already read or watched them.

Thus, when a localized version of a product has ugly cover or packaging, it kind of kills one of the main reasons some people would have wanted to buy it.

Years ago fans of the TV show "Roswell" sent thousands of jars of tabasco sauce to the WB in support of their show- ironically the show was saved but then the writers deviated from the core relationship of Max & Liz and the fans abandoned the show anyway.

Else, we'd be going anal over Yagami Light which is the correct spelling and Yagami Raito if we want the name to match how it was pronounced.

Holo is correct (spelling-wise).
http://wgrajna.net/uploads/22-11-2009-7286.jpg

Only thing is Japanese can't get their pronunciation correct (pronouncing the "l" as it should be) due to that well known "r" and "l" issue. If the pronunciation was meant to be Horo, then she would have signed "HoRo" instead of "HoLo".

WON'T BUY.

It's like when Marvel tried selling Spider Man to manga fans by taking old comics from the 80's and slapping a fresh new Manga-like cover on it. I opened it, realized the cover did not reflect the interior and put it away.

If I had seen this on the shelf at my local barnes and noble, I would not look at it. Even though I AM interested in reading the story. So this cover they created to bring in new readers alienates the readers they already have.