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Trends and Contrasts in Book Cover Design

The aim of the paper is to present the views of publishers on cover design, contrasting research from two European markets – one big (UK) and one small (Lithuania) – and through an examination of the wider theoretical and marketing perspectives, to extend our analysis of the importance of the book cover. Covers and title pages have a prominent place in Gerard Genette’s classic Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation. He defines such elements as the publisher’s peritext – that is to say paratextual content which is an essential part of the book’s architecture. The cover has many functions, whether giving information (title, author), forming part of the book’s aesthetic (design, motif), or as part of the book’s marketing. Covers are thresholds that offer ‘the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back’, and as such they are part of the publisher’s message, which Genette describes in ‘spatial, temporal, substantial, pragmatic, and functional’ terms. As presented by Phillips (2007), the cover or jacket of a book ‘conveys a message about the contents of the volume, influencing both the retailer who stocks the book and the potential purchaser in the shop’. Based on interviews with art directors and cover designers, the research presented in this paper places the instinctive process of creating designs within a commercial setting. What are the assumptions – conscious or otherwise – that publishers make about the markets they are targeting? How does the cover position the book in the minds of its purchaser? What are the differences between designs created for hardbacks or paperbacks? The paper contrasts the views of professionals in a large and a small European market.

book cover design ; book cover functions ; European markets ; paratexts

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