While it’s true a beautiful book would attract attention, I’m not sure having fancier, higher quality paper, exquisite jackets, textures, colors would make me more interested in buying a book (to read). For novels, I prefer buying books with normal quality paper with no jackets simply because I like reading without having to worry about ruining the book due to poor handling. So more often than not, while a cover interests me and propels me to pick up the book to look at the summary or first chapter, I buy the book for its content and not the cover. On the other hand, for artbooks (anime, manga, game, movies), the visual appearance of the cover as well as it’s material, texture, lettering influences my decision to buy the book. I buy artbooks for their contents and covers. Similarly, for web-novels I read online that are later published—I consider the cover for the physical copy as well: since I already know the content, I would like to own a version with a cover I like.
The video was really interesting to watch because in my typography course over the summer, we learned about some of the concepts Kidd talked about—representation of words via the typeface, etc. We also had to design a book cover for that class so Kidd’s thought process behind his book designs were quite enlightening to listen to. While I’m not that interested in book covers that don’t have character illustrations, I found his treatment of 1Q84’s cover really cool and clever. I also really liked the Buddha on the spines.
I do have to admit though, if I receive a book as a present, I will prefer a good looking cover unless I asked for that specific book.
Lesley
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