Is the Book Cover Dead?

[Rob Lister]

Nostalgic lamenting from even the decidedly non-Luddite sector, MIT's Technology Review.

Is the Book Cover Dead?

It sure doesn't look good. Thanks, technology.

I am something of a book cover art enthusiast, a man geeky enough to have once bragged about having met Chip Kidd in an elevator. (Who? My point exactly.)

And so it’s with great interest that I read, over at the Atlantic, Betsy Morais’s take on the promise and peril the Kindle holds for the art of the book cover. I often lament the loss of the feeling of a book’s heft in your hands, the way it folds open over your knee, the smell of paper, and all those other fusty, visceral attachments my kids will one day laugh at me for. For some reason, though, it’s taken me this long to realize how very much I’m worried about the fate of the book cover.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog...27783/?ref=rss

Much ado about little, but I too do miss book cover art. When reading pBooks, I'll often pause in my read to refer to the cover, especially when a passage or phrase relates back to what the artist was no doubt conceptualizing when creating the artwork.

Yea, it's there at the beginning but it in an eBook, it isn't something to which you can so casually and easily refer; it takes more than a degree of time and effort.

Maybe I should print out the cover art and tape it to the inside front on the cover!

[QuantumIguana]

No, I don't think that it is. If I am looking at a book, and I see that the cover looks like it was created by a child, I move on. I don't bother with the blurb, I don't bother with reading the sample. I won't ever buy a book because of the cover, but I might decide not to buy based on the cover. I assume that a sloppy cover indicates a sloppy book.

[HarryT]

Purely by coincidence, an interesting article on the BBC News web site today about the misuse of the word "Luddite":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17770171

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

Yea, it's there at the beginning but it in an eBook, it isn't something to which you can so casually and easily refer; it takes more than a degree of time and effort.

One thing I dislike about a lot of big 6 books is that the cover art isn't even there at the beginning of the ebook file. Instead they use the cover art to market the book and then give us some crappy placeholder instead in the actual file.

[elemenoP]

I, too, still judge a book by its cover. It's not the ONLY thing I judge by, but an indie book with a crappy cover is a big turn-off for me, and conversely, a really nice cover will make me want to see what the book is about.

Some readers will display the book cover as the sleep image. My reader doesn't do this automatically, but I take great pains (ok, little tedious pains) to make it happen myself. I find my reader to be so much more "book-like" when it's displaying the cover image when I "close" the book. Of course it would be nicer in color, but ironically the color readers such as Kindle Fire can't display anything when sleeping, of course!

I do agree with the article that book cover design needs to change in the age of buying books online (your first experience with the cover is going to be a thumbnail, whether you are shopping for ebooks for pbooks online). Could you still make a great, iconic cover? I think so. Are we going to lose richness in the design? Definitely. Like the change from LPs to CDs, where the size of the art changed.

AND: I love Chip Kidd!!!

eP

[5thWiggle]

Book covers live as long as Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are still alive and painting!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

One thing I dislike about a lot of big 6 books is that the cover art isn't even there at the beginning of the ebook file. Instead they use the cover art to market the book and then give us some crappy placeholder instead in the actual file.

Very annoying, I agree, but unfortunately the publisher has little choice in the matter if they don't have digital distribution rights to the cover image. Cover rights are normally separate to the rights to the book itself.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

One thing I dislike about a lot of big 6 books is that the cover art isn't even there at the beginning of the ebook file. Instead they use the cover art to market the book and then give us some crappy placeholder instead in the actual file.

I really dislike that too! I sure hope covers aren't dead. I think that they are necessary as a marketing tool.

One of my favorite features of my Sony T1 is that it will display the cover of the book you are reading on the standby screen. It also annoys me that Kindle books don't open to the cover art as the first page. I love the cover browser in calibre. It makes me happy to scrolll through the pretty book covers.

[DiapDealer]

What's a book cover?

To put my response in perspective (not to mention at odds with the premise of the article), I didn't give two hoots about book covers/cover art before the ebook came along. And I still don't care, now that the ebook is here. Anything other than title/author seems rather silly and pointless to me. I also don't care how well singers can dance, or how pretty the envelope was that a letter arrived in.

[calibrated]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

One thing I dislike about a lot of big 6 books is that the cover art isn't even there at the beginning of the ebook file. Instead they use the cover art to market the book and then give us some crappy placeholder instead in the actual file.

One of the things I love about Calibre is that you can use it to give books like that the cover of your choice. All my ebooks now have appropriate cover art.

[Phogg]

Its just pining for the fjiords.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Its just pining for the fjiords.

Pining for the fjiords?!

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

One thing I dislike about a lot of big 6 books is that the cover art isn't even there at the beginning of the ebook file. Instead they use the cover art to market the book and then give us some crappy placeholder instead in the actual file.

Who are you buying from? I buy from B&N and was very angry at Big 6 for this, but I noticed when I uploaded *my* book that B&N stripped that cover out. (It wasn't stripped from other stores, so they're definitely doing their own conversion.)

I'm wondering if it's a storage space saving issue, but it's annoying. I always put the covers back in Calibre.

I do love book covers, and I too have noticed that it's hard to flip back to admire whilst reading the eBook. But I think "death" is a bit premature to call since "pretty book cover" is consistently shown to be a factor in whether or not people even buy the book.

[fjtorres]

Wait a bit.
Once ePub3 takes hold, we'll have animated and video covers!
With audio!

[RainingLemur]

I like a well-drawn book cover. It's probably one of the few reasons I will still pick up the occasional physical copy of a book that I enjoy.