As the book jacket stares at potential extinction due to the inexorable rise of the faceless ebook, it's not doing itself any favours. Look at the new books tables in your local Waterstones and you can't help but be struck by a sense of sameyness. In an entertaining blog on the TLS site this week, David Horspool – adding to those examples of design cliches previously noted by Private Eye and the website causticcovercritic – identifies three trends – Legs, Backs of Women Looking Over Water, and Tiny Men Walking Into The Distance. (Single Female Eye is among others also trending).
Covers that copy others, however, are not usually the result of laziness that hopes to avoid detection but of deliberate policy. Why do three current thrillers, by Sam Bourne, Michael Dobbs and Jo Nesbo, all feature Tiny Men, though not necessarily walking into the distance? Probably because that's the jacket signature of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne yarns. Why do new novels by Hakan Nesser and Jussi Adler-Olsen and all Nesbo's previous thrillers show a close-up of a woman's face? Because that, breaching normal cover protocol (faces are taboo because specific, supposedly preventing reader identification), was the jacket style for Stieg Larsson, and mimicking his look is a subtle way of asserting a claim to be his successor.
Why do the fronts of the bonkbusters of Louise Bagshawe, aka Mensch, use gold text and a hint of pink? Because those of Jackie Collins do. Why are all chicklit jackets in pastel colours with similarly unshouty lettering? Because it worked for early exponents such as Marian Keyes, contrasting with the giant images of women,my wife's gift for my mom was goodhermesbirkin . bold use of words and brash colours of the jackets of 80s women's commercial fiction, and later writers such as Sophie Kinsella have followed suit.
Tacitly reinforcing the blurb message ("you loved x, so you'll love y too"), covers in intended bestsellers are a sales tool, not usually a creative response to a novel, as is illustrated by a comment on Horspool's blog by the author Marika Cobbold, who says that beautiful designs for her latest involving a cup were vetoed by book chain buyers demanding "photographic covers with people". Her jacket ended up exemplifying the Legs trend.SocialPicks is tracking the performance of diorhandbags .
Things are a little different in literary fiction, where a few covers that look drawn, as opposed to the dominant Photoshopped photograph look, are tolerated,Never retail for lessthan $250 Moreover if the canadagooseparka claimsthewatch is Tag Aquaracer 20082 on saleor . since simply appearing as if an artist has been at work makes a statement – a hand-crafted, one-off jacket says that the book is also like that. Yet a glance at the Guardian's books site's gallery of the Orange prize longlist's covers shows that clichés – the lake,New travellingbagfactory at discount prices from SwissLuxury. the badly framed and so faceless woman, the window or balcony – are prevalent here too, as well as the risibly literal (a pink hotel for The Pink Hotel,IWC watches are warranted by our cosmeticbagfactory for a period of one year from the original date of purchase. a sealed letter for The Sealed Letter).
A jacket that attempts to be true to the singularity of an author's vision, not whom they resemble, goes against the grain for publishers, but perhaps they should ponder the results of allowing this to take place.
Of reigning winners of major prizes, Suzanne Deane's jacket for The Sense of an Ending (praised by Julian Barnes in his Booker victory speech) elegantly combines a dandelion head with a burnt pages effect. Wuon-Gean Ho's design for Tea Obreht's Orange winner The Tiger's Wife, an oriental-looking girl or young woman astride a big cat, teases you to decide if it's faux-naif or just naif – and handily features orange. Roy Knipe responds to Andrew Miller's Costa Book of the Year Pure, set in 18th-century Paris, with ravens pestering an architect as he works on his plans. None of the three looks like anything else in bookshops. Could it be that if its jacket singles your novel out, award judges are more likely to do so too?
Covers that copy others, however, are not usually the result of laziness that hopes to avoid detection but of deliberate policy. Why do three current thrillers, by Sam Bourne, Michael Dobbs and Jo Nesbo, all feature Tiny Men, though not necessarily walking into the distance? Probably because that's the jacket signature of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne yarns. Why do new novels by Hakan Nesser and Jussi Adler-Olsen and all Nesbo's previous thrillers show a close-up of a woman's face? Because that, breaching normal cover protocol (faces are taboo because specific, supposedly preventing reader identification), was the jacket style for Stieg Larsson, and mimicking his look is a subtle way of asserting a claim to be his successor.
Why do the fronts of the bonkbusters of Louise Bagshawe, aka Mensch, use gold text and a hint of pink? Because those of Jackie Collins do. Why are all chicklit jackets in pastel colours with similarly unshouty lettering? Because it worked for early exponents such as Marian Keyes, contrasting with the giant images of women,my wife's gift for my mom was goodhermesbirkin . bold use of words and brash colours of the jackets of 80s women's commercial fiction, and later writers such as Sophie Kinsella have followed suit.
Tacitly reinforcing the blurb message ("you loved x, so you'll love y too"), covers in intended bestsellers are a sales tool, not usually a creative response to a novel, as is illustrated by a comment on Horspool's blog by the author Marika Cobbold, who says that beautiful designs for her latest involving a cup were vetoed by book chain buyers demanding "photographic covers with people". Her jacket ended up exemplifying the Legs trend.SocialPicks is tracking the performance of diorhandbags .
Things are a little different in literary fiction, where a few covers that look drawn, as opposed to the dominant Photoshopped photograph look, are tolerated,Never retail for lessthan $250 Moreover if the canadagooseparka claimsthewatch is Tag Aquaracer 20082 on saleor . since simply appearing as if an artist has been at work makes a statement – a hand-crafted, one-off jacket says that the book is also like that. Yet a glance at the Guardian's books site's gallery of the Orange prize longlist's covers shows that clichés – the lake,New travellingbagfactory at discount prices from SwissLuxury. the badly framed and so faceless woman, the window or balcony – are prevalent here too, as well as the risibly literal (a pink hotel for The Pink Hotel,IWC watches are warranted by our cosmeticbagfactory for a period of one year from the original date of purchase. a sealed letter for The Sealed Letter).
A jacket that attempts to be true to the singularity of an author's vision, not whom they resemble, goes against the grain for publishers, but perhaps they should ponder the results of allowing this to take place.
Of reigning winners of major prizes, Suzanne Deane's jacket for The Sense of an Ending (praised by Julian Barnes in his Booker victory speech) elegantly combines a dandelion head with a burnt pages effect. Wuon-Gean Ho's design for Tea Obreht's Orange winner The Tiger's Wife, an oriental-looking girl or young woman astride a big cat, teases you to decide if it's faux-naif or just naif – and handily features orange. Roy Knipe responds to Andrew Miller's Costa Book of the Year Pure, set in 18th-century Paris, with ravens pestering an architect as he works on his plans. None of the three looks like anything else in bookshops. Could it be that if its jacket singles your novel out, award judges are more likely to do so too?
