Chekhov's Mistress
On Book Covers
I think this is a great idea: “why not publish our favourite books without front covers?!” – actually, the idea of Penguin UK is to print books with art-quality covers and let readers fill them in anyway they like. I have trouble with drawing lines, circles and text much less doing anything creative. Those that can do that stuff are doing a nice job, as you can see on this Penguin gallery they set up.
But what about books without dressed up covers? I admit to being drawn into a book’s outer imagry, as many do, according to Penguin, but I’m also aware that a book’s cover is probably the furthest thing from an author’s control or original conception – particularly classics or books that may take on a long life in translation or republishing. Just look at James Cañón’s Website (which I designed). The covers for his forthcoming book in the U.S., U.K. and The Netherlands all seem to tell a different story and are probably designed to appeal to each of their local markets, but which, I wonder, would James have had in his mind’s eye as he wrote the book?
I don’t mean to sound naïve about marketing; it’s great to have something to differentiate one book from another on the shelves – same too with music; I’m often drawn in by EMI’s darkly evocative cd covers – but as good as they may be, a book cannot – drumroll please – be judged by its cover. Then why do we let it?
Haven’t you ever read a classic novel where they put paintings on the covers and somehow gotten the image from the painting in your head as one of the book’s characters? I hate it when that happens. Another problem: authors; I had to take the jacket cover off of James Merrill’s Collected Poems because his face took up the entire fat spine and wouldn’t stop staring out at me.
So as much as book covers can be a differentiator, they can also be the source of “misreadings” of sorts or annoyances. And that’s before we get into the blurbs.
p.s. publishers who have not yet started a blog, take note of the trackbacks and comments on the Penguin blog (and of course you can always hire someone like me to help out).
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: November 28, 2006
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
