Helpful student project with notes on the original book, its initial and subsequent reception, and a critical essay.

Brief history of the Penguin publishing house, including statement on Lolita and censorship: 

1958: Putnam publishes Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov, unleashing a storm of controversy. Banned by public libraries in some American cities—and officially banned by the government of France--the book becomes a best-seller. Along with Norman Mailer's Deer Park, published by Putnam in 1955, Lolita is a landmark victory against the threat of censorship.

As the title indicates, this book refers to a very particular portion of the publishing world.  Compton claims 1917-1934 "comprise the greatest inventiveness in book design," and goes on to explain they "they are also years when creation in all fields, including the arts, enshrined the hope for a better life in a country which, compared to the United States and Western Europe, remained backward in spite of modernization at the beginning of the century" (9). Avant-garde artists (writers, visual artists, architects) were leaders of the Utopian movement, and were part of the national movement striving for high literacy.  The texts and their covers both strove to embrace a newfound freedom and compel others to action.  The variety of techniques for designing book covers was broad - lithography, rubber stamps, wall-paper, hand-colouring - and reflected the freedom artists were experiencing for the first time.  Though the aesthetic varied among books, one thing remained the same: virtually all covers were politically charged and influenced.

Title: "On Telling/Selling a Book by Its Cover"

Author Corinne Katz explores the question: "What picture can help sell a thousand books?" (179)  Photgraphs, she explains, have many uses; Katz is here concerned with their usefulness as a marketing tool.  As she explains, "Different readings, conventions of representation, and institutional settings intersect on a book cover; a cover is a marketing device, an aesthetic production, and a representation that may relate to a book's content" (179).  Katz provides three ways to understand book covers: Telling as Allegorical Narrative; Telling as Categorizing; and Telling as Identity and Lure.  These three headings provide a useful matrix for considering the various uses of book covers.   

In this book about typographer Robert Brownjohn, the biography and visuals are paramount.  In the first section, a diverse group of Brownjohn's colleagues and friends comment on the artist's life and work.  The second portion of the book is primarily images of the artist's work, with minimal explanatory text.  Four pages are devoted to six striking book covers that prominently feature Brownjohn's designs.  The authors also provide overviews of major artistic movements, from Bauhaus to the architectural movements in 1960s London.  A beautiful and interesting work, this text serves as a compelling framework for considering the role of typography in a variety of artistic settings. 

This 1967 text, though somewhat dated, is a comprehensive introduction to the various elements included in book design.  Author Adrian Wilson devotes chapters to a variety of topics, from typography to paper to binding.  Of particular interest is chapter eight, which is devoted to Jackets and Paperback Covers.  Wilson addresses the problem of scale with book covers; the design must do double-duty, being able to attract readers from a bit of a distance when displayed frontally, as well as enhancing a customer's interest when he or she has already been intrigued by the title and chooses to pull the book from the shelf for a closer look. 

Hans Schmoller Essay: "The Paperback Revolution"

Schmoller outlines the history of the paperback, tracing the tradition leading to the first paperback publications in 1935 as well as the innovations and changes up through the 1970s.  A discussion explicitly about book cover design does not arise until the last two pages of the essay, but Schmoller puts forth an interesting introduction to the topic.  He discusses the role of the cover designer, whose "problem is this: a cover design should reflect, or be relevant to, the contents and character of the book; it should appeal to, or intrigue, the potential buyer; it should be recognisable as a member of a family (a group of volumes by the same author, for instance, or a series of books on related subjects); it should be easily identified as coming from a publisher proud of his imprint..."(317)  The list of requirements continues extensively.  Although Schmoller does not present an exhaustive discourse on the necessities of cover design, he does introduce a number of elements to consider, providing a firm framework.

The various levels of the publishing industry are explored by Bailey in this book.  The scope of the text is very broad, providing cursory information for multiple aspects of the process of publishing a book.  He touches on the importance of having an effective cover, designed and produced within the careful confines of the budget and to meet the satisfaction of the marketing department.  Bailey likens the jacket of a book to wrapping on a gift - it is intended to excite and entice the reader, and compliment the contents. 

Vanderbilt does a wonderful job making the business of publishing accessible and entertaining.  In the chapter entitled "Judging a Book by Its Cover" the author explains the overwhelming importance of an effective cover design for many stages of the selling process, from reaching distributors to targeting the readers themselves.  "With so much of the book's facte dependent on everything but what is between its covers," Vanderbilt explains, "publishers have learned to treat a book's skin with loving care" (91).  Alfred A. Knopf understood the critical importance of an alluring cover, something which helped propel him to his position as a top-tier publisher.  Following Knopf's success, other publishers, too, began to labor over every element of the book covers, from type-face to author photoraph. 

This comprehensive text is divided into three primary sections: The History and Structure of the Industry; The People Who Make Books; and Key Outsiders in the Book Trade.  In "The Manufacture of Appeal" (a subset of the People Who Make Books section), the authors explain the importance of book covers.  According to the authors, the importance of the book cover cannot be overstated, particularly in the paperback world.  Pages 219-221 provide an excellent explanation of the importance of book covers and their various incarnations. 

The aim of this text, as outlined by the author, is to provide a broad introduction to the book industry and help position those seeking jobs in the industry to be in the most advantageous situation.  Clark outlines the roles of people at essentially every stage of the book-selling process, including the sect known as "packagers."  Packagers "tend to produce mainly highly illustrated and saleable, expensive to produce, informational colour hardbacks which are published and marketed under the imprints of other firms" (67).  The notion of the Cover Copy is also explained: "Printed covers or jackets are needed well in advance of the printed book for promotion and sales purposes.  Thus the cover copy (e.g., title, author, blurb and ISBN) is passed to the designer" (94) early in the process, and the proofs are checked later.  The designs for book covers are highly specialized, and "most kinds of books, other than the most utilitarian, requires specific design attention which may be executed by in-house cover designers, or by art directors, who may commission freelances.  The designers responsible for covers are usually quite distinct from the book designers" (101-2). 

Gitlin provides are broad history of media over the past few centuries.  The portion addressing books is fairly limited, but he does offer some interesting pieces of information.  For example, he looks at the trend that book sales have grown per capita since 1936, and that the readership base of best-sellers is actually less educated that it was in 1936 (101).  Gitlin is useful in obtaining a broad understanding of the media and its changing nature, particularly over the past seventy-five years. 

Karl Baden, a photorgapher and teacher at Boston College, likes to spend time browsing through book stores.  He was struck how many book covers featured well known photographs.  He was also surprised by the variety of books that would feature the same image - books that otherwise had nothing apparent in common.  As his interest in the subject increased, he began buying books for their covers.  His collection was featured in an exhibit at Harvard's Carpenter Center, which ran through November 13, 2005.  The exhibit illustrates the variations of the same photograph as featured on different books.  As this article explains: "The same photograph might be cropped or tinted or have type on it.  In those various uses, the covers became a kind of history, at once revelatory and warped, of not just photography but also book design, literary taste, and marketing considerations."

Essay: "Book Covers"

This essay provides a brief description of Edward Gorey's career, with the emphasis on his extensive book cover designs.  In 1953, he accepted a position at Anchor/Doubleday, doing pasteups and lettering.  Before he left the company in 1960, he had designed approximately fifty book covers.  Author Steve Heller describes the importance of these works.  "These illustrated covers comprise a small but significant chapter in the history of paperback cover design and in the legacy of the white-bearded, fur-coated man who made them.  All but forgotten today, these covers established a visual personality for a company that was founded to reprint many of the world's classic texts, some of which were previously published in paperback versions during the late 1930s and 1940s, when virtually all mass-market books were adorned with prurient covers designed to pander to the voyeuristic reader" (71-2)  Gorey's covers were essential to the success of Anchor's paperbacks, as they established a distinct identity for the company; the artist's style was more mature and refined that that featured on pulp fictions, and it was idiosyncratic, and therefore remained in the viewer's consciousness. 

Jason Epstein, a powerhouse in the literary industry, looks at the crisis facing the book industry and anticaptes the tremendous changes that will arise.  "Many valuable books - most, in fact - are not meant to be best-sellers, and these tend to be slighted in the triage of contemporary publishing and bookselling" (13).  In other words, with the increasing attention to blockbuster publishing, even though a wide variety of books continues to be published, only those with great selling potential receive much specialized attention from the publishing house.  There has been a critical shift from the days in which publishing a best seller was a rare event (Epstein likens it to winning the lottery) to today's market, in which major publishing houses are bestseller factories. 

Epstein recounts his role in the transformation of paperbacks, from cheaply made drugstore pulp fiction, to the higher quality editions of old favorites that we are familiar with today. A key moment in the changing nature of book covers occurred in 1944, when Kathleen Windsor's best-selling Forever Amber was promoted by adorning the book with a glamorous portrait of the author.

Technology, of course, is the impetus for change in almost any industry, and the publishing world is no different.  Epstein describes the shifts in business practices as a result of technology - specifically, the internet.  It was a big step when stores' inventories could be linked to computers; but now the computers are the only interface for many stores, such as Amazon.com.  Epstein and his peers in publishing try to anticipate the next step.    

Server conveys the seductive nature of many paperbacks in post-WWII America.  He describes this area as a "brief but gloriously subversive era in the history of American publishing.  These cheap, pocket-sized editions came wrapped in lurid cover art and screaming headlines, hyping stories about crime, lust, and violence.  Casting a neonlike glow from wire racks in drugstores and bus depots across the nation, they conveyed an alluring collective vision of a corrupt and sensual world" (9).  The covers Server presents are shocking to a modern sensibility, what we would consider highly politically incorrect.  He features titles such as 12 Chinamen and a Woman (which replaced the original title of 12 Chinks and a Woman), A Swell-Looking Babe, Love Hungry Doctor, and Indiscretions of a TV Sinner.  Common to these books and almost all of the others depicted here is the overt sexualization of women.  They are often depicted in the nude, in varioust states of undress, and in seductive poses.  The books are riddled with triumph of the heroic man - over attractive women as well as over other various threats to society, such as mobs and drugs.  These paperbacks were not critically acclaimed, but did have a wide readership - due in large part to their sensational covers. 

Foreword: A Book Design Blog is described as "a weblog community in the service of book design, books, art, photography and design." Updated regularly, it is a useful tool for seeing what interested parties (the site is hosted be OspreyDesign, a book design agency) are currently interested in. There is some dialogue among the posters, often referrals to other sites or suggestions of books, exhibits, etc. a community member thinks the others might enjoy. Also helpful is the extensive list of links on the left-side tool bar. Archives of the blog are easily accessible, and go back to March of 2003.

Schiffrin offers insight into the international publishing world with this narrative history. He recounts his experiences in the publishing world, describing pivotal moments (acquisitions of companies, market censorship, the emergence of blockbuster best-sellers) through his personal lens. This book provides an interesting and accessible introduction to the evolution of the publishing industry over the second half of the 20th century.

The authors take the reader through a history of American book cover designs, from the inception of the book jacket as a utilitarian object in the 1820s to the incredibly influential and indicative introduction to the text that we now know them to be.  Drew and Sternberger trace the technological, political, and social trends that contributed to the evolution of book jackets.  The book is visually engaging, as well, with numerous color photographs to illustrate the text.  Each chapter begins with an introduction to the chapter's theme (with ambiguous or difficult terms and concepts helpfully explained), and then progresses on to numerous case studies.  In general, supplementary sources are helpful to elaborate on the grand themes of the book, but the basic ideas are more than adequately supported with examples. 

John Updike writes a great - that is to say helpful, not entirely complimentary - review of By Its Cover by Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger in the October 17, 2005 issue of The New Yorker.  Updike's article serves as a useful introduction to the concepts Drew and Sternberger explore in the book.  The hyper-politicization of the book strikes a nerve with Updike, who states the "authors' insistent politicization of design aesthetics has a musty and wordy Marxist tone" (171).  Updike also takes some issue with Drew and Sternberger's emphasis on the cover and (what he perceives as) the dismissal of the content; of course, this isn't surprising given that Updike makes his living at creating the content. 

Danielle St-Laurent explores the evolution of spy novel covers, grounding the essay in an anecdote explaining the intrigue of first seeing an attractive man pick up a thriller with a pin-up girl on the cover. St-Laurent examinesthe critical shift in the roles of women on the covers of spy novels over the course of the 20th century.

She references Klimt and Muncha as marking "the beginnings of the use of women in advertising and, by extension, on the covers of spy novels" (277). Many early spy novels covers featured men as the primary subject, with women in various states of undress relegated to the background. Even as women came to the fore of the covers in the 1930s and 1940s, a clear subjugation of the female gender remained; hieratic ideals (with their roots in Egyptian iconography) such as larger and darker-skinned male figures continued to be employed.

Over time, the covers evolved further, with women depicted in minimal clothing, and, often, fully nude [N.B., St-Laurent examines covers in French Canada, where there is less prudity regarding nudity]. A number of other conventions come into play as well: almost all the women are young (under 30), white, depicted frontally to emphasize primary sex characteristics. Furthermore, the women, almost without exception, are depicted with a gun, and gaze beyond the scope of the cover, thus enlarging the pictorial space to envelop the viewer.

St-Laurent makes a compelling argument that "The cover pinup image here is actually a part of the way one reads the novel" (278). For example, a darker-skinned cover girl indicates an exotic locale. The adherence to visual conventions makes the departures all the more striking, thus serving as an effective marketing tool. The cover and the text are inextricably linked.

Walker and Chaplin walk through the theory and history of Visual Studies. They begin with an exploration of the notion of culture, particularly as a foil to nature. The notion of culture, they argue, is inextricably linked to what the economy allows and, perhaps more importantly, deems necessary, allowing the members of a society to establish a hierarchical pattern. Now, however, "culture" is increasingly used to describe any aspect of daily life. Next, the concept of the "visual" is explored, both in how it is sensorally experienced, and what the repercussions of this perception are.

Chapter four's discussion of theory and its various manifestations is particularly interesting, as it explores not only self-conscious theory (e.g., philosophers and people who fancy themselves theorists) but also theory-as-byproduct; that is, theory that developed more organically. "In sum, there are not only theories of art, but also theories for art; theory-informed art, and even theories as art" (62). This is an especially helpful screen for considering why book covers are designed as they are.

The chapter entitled "Production, Distribution and Consumption" has a helpful explanation and description of consumer models, and examines the theories behind the design and distribution of products. In the following chapter, they examine the roles of institutions in creating various products designed to perpetuate their ideals. They explain: "in the case of large, complexly structured arts and media institutions employing or commissioning teams of specialists to produce films, televesion programmes, etc., the influence of the institutions on the content, form and ideological agenda of the final product is likely to be harder to judge because of the many functionarires and levels of mediation involved" (94).

The notion of looking and voyeurism is also explored. This is a critical concept when considering the "why" of book covers; people's selections of books mirrors their interests, and the visual to which they are drawn is an immediate indicator. Therefore, one can extrapolate from the text, that selecting a book by its cover is a sort of narcisistic voyeurism.