The Importance of the Cover

Today was somewhat of a treat for those of us on the Publishing MA at Kingston with talks from both Penguin Books and Vintage Books. Nick Robinson, the UK Sales manager for Vintage Publishing, presented a lot of facts and figures on the traditional book trade, and why it continues to matter.  But what i was struck by, particularly as Nick talked us through the building of the author as a brand, was just how integral the jacket cover art is in the success of a book; during the ongoing campaign to win readers to one particular author, for example, the jacket cover was redesigned again and again in a bid to appeal to consumers, attempting to copy other successful similar books in appearance or adding great strap lines.

I have just begun reading, 'One Day' by David Nicholls, that hugely successful book that i'm slightly behind the times with, only just getting to it now; but here we have an example; i wonder how crucial the cover was to the massive success this book has had? It is clearly a superb example of just how iconic and eye-catching a cover can be; it positively screams to be picked up; how can one resist?

The thing i really began to think about on the face of this, though, was how invisible the book is by comparison as an e-book. There is very little opportunity to see a cover and be seduced by it when browsing the Amazon Kindle store, for example; on my Kindle i have also just started reading 'The Hunger Games' by Susanne Collins; and for the life of me i have no idea what the cover looks like; the only reason i downloaded it was through a friend's recommendation. Otherwise maybe i would have noticed it first as a physical copy in a store.

Will this change with more media-based tablets such as the Kindle Fire? Obviously different digital readers are making the books on said digital readers visible with varying degrees of success; on the Apple 'iBooks' app the covers are beautifully arranged on the 'digital shelves' and are much more visible. As e-books become a more normal way of buying content, there is going to be a need to market the books through this format better in itself, rather than people noticing books in bookstores and then going home and buying them on a tablet device later.