Telling a Book by its Cover
“Some day, someone ought to explain to me the theory behind dust jacket designs. I assume they are meant to catch the eye without offering any complicated problems to the mind. But they do present problems of symbolism that are too deep for me. Why is there blood on the little idol? What is the significance of the hair? Why is the iris of the eye green? Don’t answer. You probably don’t know either.”
 -Raymond Chandler in a letter to his publisher,
Paul Brooks of Houghton Mifflin, regarding
the cover of his novel, The Long Goodbye
If the world were a good and kind place, a reader would be convinced to pick up and purchase a book only by the allure of its title. Consider French publisher Gallimard’s classic cover: light cream color with maybe a Scotch rule border, and the title set in red or black Bodoni or Garamond no bigger than 36 point. You go directly from cover to text, with no stops in between for handshakes with the author. It’s the content which demands attention and needs immediate satisfaction.
In an increasingly visual world, the book as a form seems almost static. It doesn’t blink, rotate, or glow in the dark. From television to magazines to Web sites, the image attracts our eyes and the word slumps behind. Book covers must have the same vibrancy of all the other media that elbows into our diminished spare time. According to book industry studies, the regular book buyer makes their decision in less than a minute. This means that the cover must convey immediately why this particular book is worthy of their attention.
There are no hard and fast rules for cover design: a good cover design is one that sells the book. In the 1960s, the peripatetic book designer Merle Armitage came across a book that was published by the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A forbidding drab cover hid stunning color reproductions of various native artifacts of the region. In conversation with the director, he found that the book was largely ignored. With a few hundred dollars in hand, Armitage designed a new cover, a colorful display of native symbols. The book sold.
Talk to three booksellers (or three editors or three sales reps or three readers) and you will get three different responses to the question of what makes an attractive book cover. You should never have a pure green, a pure black, or a pure red cover. Talk to three more and you’ll find you should never have a pure purple, pure yellow, or pure gray cover. These laws hold true until a book with a pure green, black, red, purple, yellow, or gray cover hits the bestseller lists and stays there for 41 weeks. What is important is readability. A good book cover has to pass the ten-foot test. The title should be readable from ten feet away, a bright lighthouse lamp beaming from the shelves. Any image should be simple and direct, no fussing with subtleties: you want the prospective buyer to pick up the book, not think about picking up the book.
The cover reflects the themes of the book, but not without a sense of play when the opportunity presents itself. When Penguin Books was ready to release the paperback of T. Coraghessan Boyle’s The Road to Wellville, it wanted to do more than crank out a smaller version of the hardcover. This comic novel concerns itself with doings of a cereal/health spa baron in Battle Creek, Michigan, home of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The paperback was released packaged in a cereal box the same size as the book, complete with instructions on breaking the seal of the tabs and proof of purchase. Why not?
Publishing houses used to have separate identities, a design sensibility that was reflected in all they produced. This was the result of having a talented in-house designer, rigorous in defense against any design improprieties. W. A. Dwiggins worked for Random House for years, shaping a distinctive typographic style for the house, even designing a typeface, Imprint, specifically for book work. Then there was Jan Tschichold, that fussy German still reeling from his sin of The New Typography, who walked into Penguin Books in 1930s, gathered together all the printed matter in the house right down to purchase order forms, and gave everything a clean, classic look. His page designs are still in use (pick up any Penguin Classic), and still clean, readable, and fresh. Many of the independent literary publishers have followed the plan of having a unified look and it has worked in their favor: Black Sparrow, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Graywolf Press, and New Directions.
Zone Books covers are Zone Book covers, easily picked out from the shelves of pretenders. A detail from a photograph is enlarged until the lines begin to lose definition, then tinted. Well-spaced type announces author and title, then the whole is anchored with a simple horizontal black bar with the words "Zone Books" letterspaced and all caps. All this is printed with a matte finish, the friendliest to the hand.
Covers need imagination, and a designer to provide it. The cover that remains is the one that speaks to the reader, not at them. Consider the hardcover edition of Robert Pinsky’s translation of The Inferno of Dante. Here we have red and black, the silhouette of the one of the damned who burns forever. This bold visual attack followed the bone of the work and put it in a modern context. But for the cover of W.S. Merwin’s translation of Purgatorio, we have little except for a detail from one of Gustav Doré’s 1861 engravings. There is little indication of the beauty of Merwin’s translation, and communicates either the text is a classic (meaning it’s good for you), or the designer/editor was down a couple of quarts on inspiration.
With thousands of new books published every year, a good book needs the brightest dress to stand out from the unruly crowd. Too often covers are designed by graphic designers who have not had access to the manuscript. This makes for confusion (see Chandler’s letter above). Ideally, the same person used for designing the interior of the book should design the exterior. The cover should speak to the interior, using the same display and text typeface. Care is needed in making any decisions regarding images: does the book lend itself to an image, or should it be just type? Who is the audience for the book? Ask the questions: young or old? male or female? education level? specialized or general? serious or playful? product or art? As the design process begins, more questions will arise. Answer them.
This is another consideration: flat laminate, press varnish, or matte finish? Flat laminate insures a long shelf-life for the book; press varnish is a mistake, something chosen to save three cents on the unit cost, and the finished books get scuffed to unsaleability being shipped from the printer; matte finish is human, warm, and can be combined with a glossy spot varnish for interesting effects, like to bring out a title or a graphic for a more three dimensional look.
Thomas Pynchon novels are an ecstasy for initiated, a new land for the unsuspecting neophyte. His Mason & Dixon was due from Henry Holt and the publisher wanted to make something special of its arrival. The story was about the two surveyors grumbling across Pennsylvania and Maryland drawing their eponymous line in the eighteenth century. At its imposing 774 pages, the book might prove a hard sell unless the cover was right. They opted for simplicity: A paper cover that resembled vellum with a detail from the stressed Caslon type, then wrapped in Mylar printed with the title and author’s name. After all, it was a retelling of history through a very modern eye.
Consider the book cover carefully. Take the time and make the investment; sometimes a penny saved is a dollar (and a reader) lost. Books are fragile creatures, prone to fits of depression when left alone on a brick-and-mortar bookstore shelf or in the dark of an e-commerce warehouse. They need readers to bring them to life. Books that are designed well call out to the people who will use them well. Listen.
Sal Glynn is an author and publishing maven
He likes making books more than anything else
E-mail Sal Glynn | Visit Sal's Blog, The Dog Walked Down the Street
Article Copyright ©2001 Sal Glynn, All Rights Reserved
SCORN & WINE PRESS, May 2001 Edition
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