.
| Hearsay: |
In All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin, advertising guru/god and bald man-about-town, argues that in a low-trust world marketers can’t yap on about features but instead need to tell a story, one we want to hear. Take the ShamWow, for instance – it’s not enough that it soaks up a bathtub’s worth of water, it’s also a kooky viral sensation.
In a recent blog post Godin similarly argues that the purpose of a book cover is to be the jumping off point for conversation. The cover can’t merely sell the book or even just give you an idea of what it’s about, it needs to guide eyeballs to the back cover, and then to the flaps. After cash-money is plunked down, the interest generated by the art and copy on the jacket then needs to be fulfilled through the story. For all this to happen a cover thus needs to be the following (according to Godin):
- Iconic (because iconic items tend to signal ‘important’)
- Noticeable across the room (you see that lots of other people own it, thus making it likely that you’ll want to know why)
- Sophisticated (because this helps reinforce that the ideas inside are worthy of your time [Ed: more examples on blog]
What I extrapolate from this is that a cover, like a bottle of shampoo, should appeal to what we aspire to, how we would like to be perceived. If this was 100% true than there’s no way that I would consume Reading by Lightning on the subway as, though the story is solid and happens to be nominated for the Amazon First Novel award, the cover has none of the slick sexiness of, say, Lisa Moore’s February. Then again, I guess I take pride in reading a relatively obscure work with an unobtrusive cover, like how a hipster wants to be perceived as ‘post-cool’.
Someone fetch a shrink – the covers you choose as worthy may be the window to your soul, your shallow shallow soul.
January 2006
December
2005
November
2005
October
2005
September
2005
August
2005
July
2005
June
2005
May
2005
April
2005
March
2005
February
2005
January
2005
December
2004
November
2004
October
2004
September
2004
August
2004
July
2004
June
2004
May
2004
April
2004
March
2004
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
November
2003
October
2003
September
2003
August
2003
Bookninja © Copyright
The opinions expressed on this site are those of individual participants
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the site owners,
organizers, or other participants.
[powered by WordPress.]
July 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Godin sure seems to have a lot of time on his hands for a man who produces what seems like 19 or so books per year. I can’t say I’ve given covers all this much thought–I do think they’re very important, but I never get much beyond thinking, “Huh. Nice cover.”
And now I won’t ever be able to look at Godin again without thinking BMAT-bald man about town. Nice.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Perhaps not a window to your soul, but a window on your reading tastes. Covers are developed with certain looks in mind to appeal to the reader as much as they are designed to reflect the author’s work. Same with magazines and music packaging. The design influences one’s subconscious taste metre, so in a store you can handily accept or reject an unknown book solely based on visual indicators. Don’t like mysteries? Avoid shadowy covers with large author names. Chick lit not your style? Hide your eyes from the pink cover with the illustration of shopping bags and lower-cased quirky title font.
However, if you know of the author, have heard great things about the book, rabidly follow all award/Oprah/Heather’s Picks lists, etc., then even the most tasteless packaging won’t sway your decision to buy it. So a cover only goes so far.
Don’t believe me, though. I’m a book designer after all :)
(Glad you thought the design of February was sexy, by the way.)
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:03 am
Where is this euphoric studio where designers are allowed to create works of wonder that fully reflect the book’s content without interference of department heads, project managers, ad reps, publishers, boss’s daughters and authors who all like Comic Sans and think the cover should have a squiggly purple thing in the corner?