Book Covers (Don't) Matter
Of Course. Not. Maybe? Meow!
I’m not much of a science guy, but I’ve been thinking about Schrödinger’s cat.
It’s a thought experiment designed to illustrate a paradox of “quantum superposition.” A (theoretical) cat is placed inside of a (theoretical) box along with (theoretical) poison or some other (theoretically) lethal material.1 Until the box is opened, we, the observers, do not know if the cat is alive or dead. Therefore, the theory goes, the cat can be considered both dead and alive simultaneously.
Why, of all things, is a quantum physics thought experiment on my mind?
“The cover is superficial, negligible, irrelevant with respect to the book,” Jhumpa Lahiri writes in her essay, The Clothing of Books. “The cover is an essential, vital component of the book. One must accept that both these sentences are true.”
If you lock a book jacket in a box along with poisonous market forces, does it live or does it die?
As someone who designs book covers, I find Lahiri’s assertions interesting and resonant—and also uncomfortable. Does what I do matter?
Of course. Not. Maybe?
Hey there, kitty cat.
A book’s cover is part of its form in support of its content.2 We read books for the words on their pages—this is where their meaning, their purpose, lives. But we can also find real, emotional meaning in a book’s cover on its own merit and in conjunction with the words it encloses. A cover is “a sort of translation,” Lahiri writes. “It represents the text, but it isn’t part of it … it has to have its own take on the book.”
Covers are separate from the text—and replaceable—but some get baked into my idea of a book. I am ambivalent about the idea of “author branding,” but covers occupy a space similar to brand, at least by Marty Neumeier’s definition in his book The Brand Gap: “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.” In tangible terms, Paul Bacon’s iconic cover for Catch-22 is not Catch-22 itself. But to me, Catch-22 without Bacon’s iconic cover is not really Catch-22.3 I’d bet there are books you feel the same about.
That being said, Lahiri reminds us, “regardless of its power, if it doesn’t sell the book, [the cover] has no value.” You may quibble with this; I certainly want to instinctually: “this cover is valuable to me!” But remember, a book generally needs to sell in order for you to even know about it and care about its cover in the first place.
Today, a book will often receive a new visual treatment for its paperback edition, released months or years after the hardcover.4 Sometimes, the design is a rearrangement of the same basic elements—maybe adding an award sticker or a new blurb5—that adorned the jacket. Other times, it is a complete redesign in hopes of rejuvenating sales. There are many other reasons why a book sells (or doesn’t), but its cover is a factor in that equation. If books are ephemeral, their jackets are even more so. The cover is intended to sell the book, yet we do not remember the best-selling books from just a century ago. Even The Great Gatsby, with its iconic eyes, is receiving fresh looks now that the title is in the public domain and any publisher may offer their own version of it.6
Further compounding the question of a book jacket’s importance, a cover does not even have to be good in order for the book to sell or be loved by readers. “I remain attached even to certain ugly covers of books I would read and return in high school without ever owning them,” Lahiri says. “In the end, the beauty of the cover has nothing to do with it. Like every true love, that of the reader is blind.” Ugly, or even mediocre-looking books, are often successful. Think about Colleen Hoover or James Patterson books—these covers are more akin to seeing the familiar Starbucks logo on the freeway than a nuanced interpretation of ideas. They matter, but only insofar as they uphold the expected status quo.7
What is the perfect book jacket? It doesn’t exist. The great majority of covers, like our clothes, don’t last forever. They make sense, give pleasure, in only a specific arc of time, after which they are dated. Over the years they need redesign, change, just like old translations. A new jacket is given to a book to reinvigorate it, to make it more current. The only part left intact is the original text, in the language in which it was written.
I was going to write that this is less of an axiom in the university publishing space, where I do so much of my work—but is it? Just this year, I completed a project in which I repackaged three of an author’s previous titles into one compendium. They needed it: The first of the titles was published in 1991, and it shows. But who is to say that in 30 years my cover will not scream “2024”?
Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has a complicated relationship with her own book covers. Even a writer of her stature does not have more than some say in the clothing of her titles. She writes:
The first time I see one of my covers, while thrilling, is always upsetting. No matter how effective or intriguing it may be, there always exists, between us, a disconnect, a disequilibrium.
And:
A good cover is flattering. I feel myself listened to, understood.
A bad cover is like an enemy; I find it hateful.
There is a certain awful cover for one of my books that elicits in me an almost violent response. Every time I am asked to autograph that edition, I feel the impulse to rip the cover off the book.8
And finally:
…In my opinion, most of my book jackets don’t fit me, which is why I sometimes think, as a writer too, that a uniform would be the answer.
Lahiri further explores this idea of a uniform, flirting with the idea of editorial series design as a solution to her ambivalence about book covers. Think of those orange Penguins, or more contemporary and less uniform, Penguin Classics, NYRB Classics, and McNally Editions. They are also, according to the author, more common in Italy, where she lives, than the United States.
The authors published in a series belong to one another, and they all belong to the publishing house. Each book represents the choice, the taste of the editor, but the series confers on the book an identity, a sort of citizenship … this raises an interesting and much debated question. Is the series more important, or the individual books within?
She admits these series have “a somewhat formal, even pompous effect,” but I get the sense Lahiri would prefer this to a jacket with a poor aesthetic or conceptual fit.
This is, at least in part, because a poor conceptual fit for one of Lahiri’s books could be damaging and perpetuate stereotypes. “For some publishing houses, my name and photograph are enough to quickly commission a cover that teems with stereotyped references to India: elephants, exotic flowers, henna-painted hands, the Ganges, religious and spiritual symbols. No one considers that the greater part of my stories are set in the United States, and therefore pretty far from the river Ganges.”
Stereotypes on book covers are still an issue, though perhaps now driven more by comp titles and past financial success than cultural stereotype.
“[Lisa] wanted the art to be gender neutral—no pinks or purples. No images of Black people or linked hands, no variegated splotches suggestive of DEI or unity,” Tajja Issen writes in “The Hidden Racism of Book Cover Design,” her recent piece for The Walrus. “She’d seen it done to too many other books by Black women—think Maame by Jessica George, or Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. By giving a clear sense of her limits, Lisa figured she’d avoid the problem.”
Spoiler: She didn’t.
“If a book adorned by racially reductive imagery was gobbled up by the target audience in the past, publishers will be motivated to do it again. The goal is commercial viability.”
In this regard then, getting the book cover right—or at least not getting it horribly wrong—matters a great deal toward combatting stereotypes. But continuing our little paradox, if a stereotypical book cover sells (our previous heuristic for the value of a book cover), does a more nuanced and less stereotypical cover? And if it doesn’t sell, what does that mean for the continued existence of the book—or its jacket?
The Clothing of Books makes me think of Peter Mendelsund, my favorite cover designer and arguably why I got into this racket in the first place. He (mostly) no longer designs book jackets. Mendelsund is still in the design world—he left his Art Director job at Knopf to be the Creative Director at The Atlantic—but these days his priority seems to be writing books. He’s written several, both fiction and nonfiction. One of today’s most brilliant cover designers hung up InDesign and opened his word processor.9
I’m never surprised anymore when book designers like Mendelsund, Chip Kidd, or Tree Abraham turn to writing their own books. Is every successful book cover designer an aspiring, failed, or soon-to-be writer? No, but sometimes it feels like it. What we do is ephemeral, oriented toward the marketplace, and while attention grabbing, ultimately in service of a more important work. Is writing the “real” job here? I think of this newsletter and my own aspirations to write. We do book design because we love books, right? Is it just the next best thing to writing one?
What I love about this question is that for some of you reading, the answer may be a definitive “no.” For others, a clear “yes.” Ask me on different days and you’ll get different answers. Like so many things in book design, it depends.
As it often happens with this newsletter, and my thoughts in general, I don’t have a solid conclusion. I’m not arguing that book covers shouldn’t be replaced, or anything else to protect a fragile sense of designer self importance. I think graphic design is more important than the average person does, but I also think it’s probably less important than the average designer does. Like David Carson (supposedly) said: “Graphic design will save the world right after rock & roll does.”
So here we are, in this liminal space, asking questions of books with paradoxical answers.
Do book covers matter? Of course. Not. Maybe! Meow.
No cats were harmed in the making of this newsletter.
I mean this in the Art criticism connotation, not the YouTube video connotation.
This itself another sales tactic.
Here’s Lahiri on blurbs: “I hate reading comments on the cover; it is to them we owe one of the most repugnant words in the English language: blurb. Personally, I think it deplorable to place the words and opinions of others on the book jacket. I want the first words read by the reader of my book to be written by me.”
Even before entering the commons, the famous Francis Cugat eyes was not the only cover Gatsby has had.
I mean absolutely no offense to the Hoover and Patterson cover designers. They absolutely nailed the brief and to work at that level, you gotta be a pro.
Boy do I wanna know which cover this is.
Unless he writes his books in InDesign like Chip Kidd did.
One of my favourite things about being an independent author is the freedom to work with a cover designer to get a book jacket that fits. I love the covers my designer Donna Rogers has made for me, and readers like them too.
“There is a certain awful cover for one of my books that elicits in me an almost violent response. Every time I am asked to autograph that edition, I feel the impulse to rip the cover off the book.”
It had never occurred to me before, but if the author isn’t the client and doesn’t have much, if any, say in the cover design of their own book, it is infuriating to think that authors sometimes have to wear clothes and present their writing in a way that doesn’t reflect them at all.
This is such a good deep dive into the topic of cover design and opened my eyes to things I had never considered.