The Changing Face Of Book Covers

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the demise of the printed book. But with the shift to electronic reading, what is the current state, and future, of the one page that first attracts us to a book – the cover?

I remember, as a child, buying my first paperback that had a shiny cover with embossed, silver lettering. There was a man running from a car, the action silhouetted against a blue tinted background. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the book or what it was about. But I do remember the cover. I was in awe of it.

Fast forward to life today and we are fast embracing the digital revolution. It could be argued that book covers are more important than ever.

The biggest issue concerning book covers these days is size. Even printed book covers had to exist in at least two sizes – the hardback and paperback versions. But in the electronic world, the situation is even more pronounced.

E-book covers have to look good in at least two sizes – 800x600 pixels and 90x60. And that is just cruel. Pity the poor designer who has to do this. Such polar opposites make the job quite tricky. But it can be done.

That small, thumbnail size is probably the most important as things stand. It's the image people see when they're browsing. The one epithet you want to avoid when designing a cover that looks good at this size is 'busy'. A 'busy' cover just doesn't work at this size.

I've seen some wonderfully intricate designs with calligraphic typefaces on covers in bookshops. But then, when that design is transferred to electronic retailers like Amazon, it has no impact. What a publishing is hoping for, at this stage, is that the consumer will have seen the cover in a bookshop on the high street, and retained that memory. That's certainly an attitude that will die out.

In the future, book covers will have to work in electronic form before they're even considered for the print form.

In drawing parallels with the art world, I believe the pop artists of the 1960s would have made geat e-book cover designers. To me, that's also when graphic design also came of age. A lot of book covers used in that era had strong lines and shapes, and a bold use of colour.

But one issue that is the same for printed covers as it is for e-book covers is 'genre'. Largely speaking, people expect certain genres to have certain types of covers. This has always been one of the main challenges of designing book covers. You want the cover to be original, yet you want to assure the reader that the content is in line with the genre she adores. That challenge remains.

What about the future? That could be very interesting. I don't think any retailer has yet managed to build an interface that replicates the joy of browsing in a bookshop. I think the iBookstore comes close. The Amazon interface almost puts me off browsing. But I'm sure they'll change that, especially as e-readers haven't yet finished evolving.

In essence, a good book cover still needs to satisfy the same requirements. It needs to grab people's attention and it needs to reflect the book's content. But with a multitude of formats and delivery systems, it now needs to be very adaptable. Maybe we'll get to a point where there will be a slightly different book cover for each delivery system or interface. And browsing for books will again become a joy.

Mark Capell is an independent author and fouder of The Creative Criteria, providing digital publishing, design and marketing for independent authors.

The Dangers Of Turning Fact Into Fiction

I love fiction. And I love fiction that's based on fact. But mixing the two can get you into trouble if you're not careful.

For anybody living in London in August 2011, the riots were inescapable. You didn't have to be caught up in the middle of the fighting to be affected. There was a mood, a tension that lingered in the air. Shops were closing at 3 p.m. People were eyeing each other suspiciously. Even a particular item of clothing suddenly acquired a demonic trait. As I put it in my novella, 'Riot Murder':

“The hoodie was transformed from a benign piece of leisurewear into a uniform for the disaffected, the angry, the malevolent. So much so that ‘hoodie’ was no longer a piece of clothing. It was a whole person. A hoodie was somebody likely to steal, plunder and do you unimaginable harm.
People were crossing the street when a hoodie crossed their path - even if it was a 70-year-old gentleman walking his dog. That’s how quickly the fear had permeated the collective consciousness. And lifting the hood was tantamount to cocking a gun.”

The climax of 'Riot Murder' depends on a particular detail of the 2011 riots. It was something so extraordinary that I felt compelled to use it. I can't say what it is because it forms the main twist of the novella. But I can talk about the issues it raises. It concerns a real person.

Now obviously there are legal ramfications to using real people in a novel. Characters can't be lifted directly from real life. Real people can sue.

But here lies the rub. All writers draw inspiration from real life. Even those specialising in the fantasy, or science fiction, realm. And what people do in real life make the very best stories in themselves; even though they are often incomplete and not utterly satisfying.

For a while, I thought about devising another storyline. But I kept returning to this man and what he did. When his court case came up, I decided I had to use the storyline I'd devised. It was a story screaming out to be told. Now let's get one thing clear. I did not know the man, had never met him, or read his life story. It was just one detail I wanted to use, which is perfectly fair game. Every other facet of my fictional character was made up.

But we live in litigious times. People trip on a paving stone and their first thought is who can they sue.

What I did, finally, was set the story forward in time. 'Riot Murder' takes place in the summer of 2012. The London riots have reignited, as many Londoners think they will, and an undercover cop is murdered. Setting it in the near future liberated the story in many ways. I didn't have to feel guilty about taking liberties with what actually happened this summer. So it worked out for my story.

I think the moral of this story is that no writer should be put off being inspired by real life. The real world is the lifeblood of fiction. Stories are important to the progression of society, no matter how trivial. Even a little detective novel can make people think twice. It's why stories were invented by our cave dwelling ancestors.

I want to say: to hell with opportunistic people's greedy need for the fame and potential financial reward of a court case. Stories must be told. But, of course, as a writer, you have to take this into account; you need to be careful. Make sure your character is genuinely different from its real life inspiration. And always include a disclaimer before your story.

There's always a workaround. And that workaround might just open a whole new world of possibilities.

'Riot Murder' – a Myles Morgan mystery by Mark Capell is available from Amazon and Amazon U.K. and will shortly be available from Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore.

A Future Without Books? - A Review Of BBC1's 'Books: The Last Chapter?'

The worst part of this TV programme on BBC1 was nothing in the show itself. It was the title and pre-show publicity. The title, 'Books: The Last Chapter?' embodies everything I hate in the e-books versus physical books debate.

'A book is an instrument for the transmission of ideas,' said Bob Stein, from The Institute For The Future Of Books. It's this single fact that is often overlooked by the Luddites who genuflect and predict the end of the world when envisaging a future without the printed page.

The rise of e-books does not mean the end of 'books'. E-books are books. It's not hard to fathom, it's there in the term.

Alan Yentob did a good job in presenting the current climate and putting it into its historical context. There is no global warming situation for bibliophiles, just a natural evolution.

I sniffed an interesting parallel between the present day situation and the moment when William Caxton invented the printing press. It could be argued that it was at this point in history that books as objects lost their true individuality. Before that, books were handwritten. Monks were probably decrying this advance in the same way Julian Barnes called for the 'protecting' of the physical book.

But this particular debate is about books as objects. It's not about content, which is what truly matter. As Theo Gray, of Touch Press, put it: 'There will always be people who fetishise printed books.' The show humorously illustrated this in the form of an interview with Rachael Morrison, a librarian at the Museum For Modern Art who has the responsibility of sniffing books and describing their aroma in a log.

The humour continued when Yentob interviewed three people who embodied the traditional publishing values – agent, Ed Victor; publisher, Gail Rebuck; and author, Ewan Morrison. The show sat them down in a quirky, surreal, Georgian living room, with a portrait of a rabbit with huge breasts hanging over them, as if to emphasise their antiquated trade. Their views weren't as unenlightened as the show wanted them to be. But there was an uneasy guffawing when they all agreed that they needed each other.

Books take a year to write, said Morrison. Publishers remain as curators, said Rebuck. Agents are needed to protect writers, said Victor. Now anybody involved in digital publishing could challenge all three statements. And if your name is Joe Konrath, John Locke, or Amanda Hocking, challenge them successfully on empirical grounds. In a year we could all be out of a job, said Morrison. In the upcoming age of the author-entrepreneur he might just be right.

One issue the book didn't address is the one that turned me on to the digital experience - e-ink. I don't like reading on a glaring screen. Over long periods of time my eyes tire. But with e-ink on devices such as the Kindle, Nook or Sony e-readers, the experience is comfortable - even more comfortable than reading paper.

The value of having not just 'a' book but all the books you want on you all the time was the major boon of the e-book revolution for Publishing Consultant, Mike Shatzkin. 'I have no physical sentimentality about the physical book at all,' he said. And neither did this TV show, which was a pleasant surprise.