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From Stephen Elliott
As the associate art director at Knopf, Chip Kidd’s the man when it comes to book covers. Over at the New Yorker, Ronald Kelts looks at Kidd’s latest project, Haruki Murakami’s The Strange Library:
...moreKidd designs books by James Ellroy, Cormac McCarthy, Oliver Sacks, and many other top-tier contemporary authors.
...moreHolding it in your hand now, we hope it feels familiar and warm, at once reminding you of the great history of The Review, while also giving you a sense that you’re being handed the very future of writing and art.
Susan Coll reveals, at The Millions, a detail she added to her new book, The Stager, based on the cover design.
...moreCover designer Peter Mendelsund has released two new books about cover design. Cover collects many of the images Mendelsund has designed over his career and What We See When We Read explores the relationship between cover art and the books behind it.
...morePrinting pricing information on book covers has long been a standard practice to help track inventory. The suggested pricing also helps increase the perceived value of books. The internet, especially Amazon, has changed that perception of value leading some booksellers to question the pre-printed price information.
...moreSome of the best self-published books end up with amateur covers. While professional publishers consider every detail of book’s cover, like whether a font should be sans-serif or not base on genre, independent authors lack the experience to do the same. The Airship explains the process:
...moreAll of this, every aspect, from font selection to colors to composition, is put together by a team consisting of representatives from the publisher, editors, the art department, the designer(s), sales and the authors themselves, whose contracts usually stipulate cover design consultation or approval.
The disparity in the number of male and female bylines might very well have something to do with the artwork featured on their books. Cover art informs readers of a book’s contents, and publishers certainly try to manipulate readers, as Eugenia Williamson explains at the Boston Globe:
...moreHarbach’s all-text cover has a hand-drawn, cursive script (for ladies) on a navy blue background (for men).
Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sure try. At 22 Words, a six-year-old tries to suss out the plots of classic novels by looking at their cover art.
Wuthering Heights is a bit tricky, but she gets On the Road more or less right!
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