But Franco's real gumption, it seems, came when he appeared alone on the cover of the movie tie-in edition of the book.
The tie-in edition of the novel announces that it's "Now A Major Motion Picture", but "major" is just what Midnight's Children isn't.
The movie tie-in edition of the book even has the blurb "there were three people in her marriage", alluding to the line Diana used when interviewed by Martin Bashir.
In September, Anchor Books released a movie-tie-in edition of Dan Brown's 2013 best-seller "Inferno," to accompany Ron Howard's adaptation of the novel, which came out in theatres last weekend.
A movie tie-in edition of the first book, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," will be released on Tuesday, ahead of the film's release in the United States on Dec. 21.
In his preface to the tie-in edition of Brighton Rock Vintage Classicss, £7.99), JM Coetzee detects in Greene's prose from the start "a preference for observation from the outside without commentary, tight cutting from scene to scene, equal emphasis for the significant and non-significant".
Afterwards, he read a tie-in edition of the book during a twelve-hour train journey from Wellington to Auckland when he was seventeen.
Sales history for movie tie-in editions of novels has been mixed.
(Mr. Serrano produced each in editions of three).
All these items were issued in editions of three, plus one artist's proof.
