Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
You asked for our thoughts, so please don't take mine as insulting, even though they are negative regarding what you a planning to do.
Book covers are much more interesting than spines. The only reason we have spine images/text, IMHO, is because it is not space efficient to put books on a bookshelf with the covers facing out. Spine images are a compromise to utilize bookshelf space more efficiently. Spines are rarely a thing of beauty, they are an attempt to add functionality. Any appeal that a spine might have had - and many have no appeal to start with - is gone once it becomes a fake spine generated by A.I. or otherwise by a computer. "Electronic" spines not only will tend towards ugly, they will also create a large hit against functionality. Who wants to flop their head over to read sideways letters bottom to top or top to bottom? Or even worse - top to bottom stacked vertically over each other? Humans - most of them anyway - are used to reading horizontally, not vertically. Electronic fake spines kill two birds with one stone - you get both ugly, and non-functional.
There is probably a niche group of readers who would enjoy fake spines, but I'm not in that group. But don't give up. You never know. Once upon a time I was in the group that wouldn't even consider reading an eBook, because those were all "fake books". But time has changed my mind on that, so maybe I could be turned to like fake spines in the future.
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Thank you for taking the time to explain your view so thoroughly. I don’t find it insulting at all—I asked for honest thoughts, and I appreciate yours.
Your point that spines are mainly a space-efficient compromise for physical shelves is a very good one. I had not really thought about them in that way before.
The issue of “fake” spines is also one of the most important challenges I’m aware of and have been trying to work through. I’ve been studying strong examples of spine typography and book design, with the hope of making the automatically generated ones feel more considered and visually pleasing.
I will definitely keep the concerns you raised in mind, especially around readability and whether the result has any real value beyond decoration. Thank you again for the thoughtful feedback, and for the encouragement as well.