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What will happen to book covers in a digital world?

JA April 08

How do you judge a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one? That was the question Motoko Rich put to readers in this article from the New York Times on how the transition to the digital will effect our reading habits in years to come. The issue is perhaps more complex than one might initially think. Covers are, after all, not only a matter of aesthetics, but also important social signifiers. They act as ongoing ‘ads’ for publishers and authors, as well as indicating our personal reading tastes to the wider world.

On the question of design, the effect of the digital is arguably more straightforward. Amazon and the like often reduce covers to small icons or cropped images – Apple’s iBooks store, for example, seeks to emulate something of the ‘real’ world by lining books face-out on a wooden shelf. The only problem is, at that scale, many of the subtleties of the original design, not to mention endorsement quotes or publisher logos (all previously crucial elements) are rendered either unreadable or obsolete.

According to the NYT, changes thus far have seen a push to make the author’s name and title bigger so that the type is still visible even when reduced. I’d expect to see a lot more than this though as publishers warm to the medium, and I’d be ever curious to know what designers think of the way forward. Will books be accompanied by their own icons or graphics as well as covers, which might prove better equipped to grab our attention on screen? Ebooks are already being pumped full of bonus features, rather like the second disc on a DVD. The Enhanced Edition of Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro (the Australian cover of which was the cause of some controversy) for example featured audio extras plus a video of the man himself reading selected passages – will covers go a similar way, becoming new media vehicles in themselves? Rich likens the transition to that of the music industry, which has ‘pushed back by finding fresh ways to display CD cover art on the Web sites where the songs are bought and the iPod screens where they are played’.

Another ingredient is added when one considers what the disappearance of traditional covers might mean for publishers and their marketing strategies. The cover is often the first hurdle between the book and the consumer – it’s what gets us to pick something up when browsing aimlessly through the ranks and what encourages use to flip through the pages. Rich points out that the absence of this means the loss of ‘free advertising’ in many ways. But that said, I don’t want to get caught up in simply listing the negatives here – the digital is not simply a vacuum and what we lack will most likely be made up in another shape or form. It’s worth remembering that books are also getting all kinds of new publicity these days through blogs, twitter, facebook and iPhone apps.

Over at the Millions, Eden Lepucki makes this point:

If a book is a cultural signifier, then the act of reading a book in public conveys important information to other readers. I always check out what people are reading: in coffee houses, at the beach, in bars, on airplanes. I am taking note, I am building a reader’s identity. It’s like – what kind of jeans is your soul wearing? It saddens me deeply to think about how this kind of signal will be lost with the popularity of ebook devices. What can an anonymous Kindle tell me about your inner life, and about what entertains you?

I can certainly identify with the first part of her observation here. Whenever I’m on the train or tram one of the first things I do is sneak a look at what my co-commuters might be reading. There’s always a small moment of happy realisation when I see someone holding a favourite author or title. A while ago I leant a friend my copy of Candy by Luke Davies and he told me that once, on the way home, he’d been interrupted by the women next to him – she owned a bookstore and loved the novel as well. They spoke about writing and literature for the better part of the trip back.

On Lepuck’s final point though, I have to disagree. True a Kindle or iPad might not at the moment be able to reveal much about your reading habits, but that doesn’t mean electronic devices won’t have similar abilities in the future. A while back I wrote that ebooks and screens can still be things of beauty in their own right and I still believe that to be true. As Maud Newton commented both in the NYT article and her own blog: ‘The gadgets will develop so that readers can signal their preferences to strangers, or people will find workarounds.’

 

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