Eye-Catching or Tasteless?

[Paul Whybrow]

I've chuntered on about designing book covers several times over the years, including here and here. I've recently been redesigning the covers of my crime novel series for launching them as eBooks this summer.

The importance of a book cover can't be overstated, as it's the first thing that a potential reader sees. Your story takes on an identity from the image on the cover, the colours used and the typography.

Role Of Book Cover Design In Your Book’s Success

Recently, I've seen several articles about Facebook's 3D Photos software being adapted to use for book covers. It's discussed here:

Bring Your Book Covers to Life with Facebook's 3D Photos

I have mixed feelings about it. It would work well on Fantasy and Science Fiction stories, but less so for Crime tales. As for Erotica, I'm staying away from that area—after all, what 'object' would you choose to highlight in the foreground of the image...the mind boggles, as might the cover!

The movement of an image would certainly catch the eye, as it's how we're hardwired, but is it a bit naff, a gimmicky trick, a bit tasteless like black velvet paintings?

What do you think?

 

[Dan Payne]

I'm a purist when it comes to fiction. Call me conservative if you like (in this area and, hopefully, no other) but I would prefer to preserve the idea of the printed book. Electronic books with hypertext links and embedded images are bad enough. Now we can't trust that the words we read will stay as written from day to day, with authors and publishers having the ability to amend a work even when it's already in someone's library. Adding a video to the front cover? What's next - YouTube video trailers for the latest releases?

Besides, there are practical considerations. Adding an animation to the cover of a book would probably make it stand out amongst the crowd - for now. But just wait until every book in the storefront has the same gurning guy with a broadsword flexing his muscles, or the same exploding planet, or a motorcycle jumping over a car... There's a reason Netflix and other streaming platforms use still images for their movie catalogues, at least until you zoom in for a closer look. Too much movement, too much detail, and we get visual exhaustion.

If you expect to have a still image for your cover in listings, but animation when you select the book, the moment has passed. The point of the video cover is to catch the attention of potential readers. By the time it's in their hot little hands, you've already got their attention. This is a work of static words; you're not offering a movie. Personally, I'd rather not trigger the expectations of readers, nor prime them to turn off their analytical faculties, when opening my book. Movies and television, I believe, require a very different set of thought processes than reading a book. For me, my cover should start the way I intend to continue - with words that trigger the imagination, not the visual cortex.

I wonder if we'll see a rush of terrible and amateur cover images, leading to a Myspace of clashing colours and typography (yeah, I'm calling it, a "Myspace" is now a collective noun) before everything settles down to covers that are striking and attractive and static?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I've noticed that a couple of British newspaper websites, the Daily Mail and the Express (I like to keep an eye on the enemy!) have taken to having a video start in a pop-up screen at the bottom right of the page. It needs to be cancelled each time, but soon reappears, usually showing shaky footage from a smartphone or CCTV camera. There's no way of cancelling it completely. It's almost as if the newspaper is contributing to dumbing down in a reading is hard, watch the story instead way.

 

[CageSage]

Another consideration about having such a memory heavy gimmick is the cost - Amazon has rules about how much you can price a book at when the book is over a defined 'weight' (? does anyone recall what the variations are?). If the vid causes a 1M book to become 15M, is it going to be worth it? Will you have to overprice the book to make a dollar?

 

[Brian Clegg]

Definitely would irritate me, rather than encourage me.

 

[E G Logan]

I've noticed that a couple of British newspaper websites, the Daily Mail and the Express (I like to keep an eye on the enemy!) have taken to having a video start in a pop-up screen at the bottom right of the page. It needs to be cancelled each time, but soon reappears, usually showing shaky footage from a smartphone or CCTV camera. There's no way of cancelling it completely. It's almost as if the newspaper is contributing to dumbing down in a reading is hard, watch the story instead way.

If you read some of the comments DM readers make, it seems reading is hard, watch the story might be bang on the button...

 

[Eva Ulian]

Put it this way Paul, the only book worth putting on a 3D display is erotica- I think that genre would do such a device justice.