You Can’t Judge A Person By Its Cover
By Jeanne Kisacky | October 31, 2011 |
This blog is about reading rather than writing. In particular, e-reading. I’m not talking about how e-books are outselling paper books, how you can carry a library in your pocket, or how and why you should be getting your work out there into everyone’s e-device. This is about how e-readers are transforming the basic experience of reading. Those changes are inevitably going to transform what is getting read, and consequently what will get written.
Taking the Content Out of Literary Fashion Accessory
I live in a college town—where you are what you read. Books are literally part of a person’s image. I have known people to conspicuously carry around ‘serious’ books (think Dostoevsky or Nietzche) that they are not really reading so they will ‘look’ smart. E-readers change that game. They display no indication of the book’s literary content, only the material, color, and pattern of the e-reader and its accessorizing cover. This limits the ability of books to stand visually as an expression of individual literary tastes and thoughts. Will this reduce the readership for serious books? Will it generate more conversations, since instead of being able to tell ‘at a glance’ what someone is reading, people might have to ask (or text) each other?
No More Guilt.
E-readers don’t reveal whether they are displaying a romance, a history, a work on philosophy, a radical call to arms, or an idiot’s guide to something technical that every five year old already knows. This privacy, even in public, has an enormous potential to remove the guilt from ‘guilty pleasures.’ That liberation, in turn, will boost sales of any book that fits someone’s definition of ‘guilty’ pleasure—be it erotica, romance, mysteries, thrillers, rightwing or left-wing political material, etc.
No More Covers?
Is a cover archaic advertising—a holdover from the paper industry? Since e-reader devices don’t display a book’s cover, why do e-books even have covers? It’s not like you walk by an e-book store and stop in because a cover caught your eye. ‘Shopping’ for e-books is as freeform as surfing the web– a plain-text hyperlink on the proper website might generate far more traffic than a ritzy cover. Does branding—whether of the author, the publisher, the genre, or even the social media maven (the reviewer/blogger)—become the new ‘cover’, the means of instant identification of each individual book to the consumer? Will future e-books include a banner ‘ad’ across the top of the screen, to replace the lost cover and regain this marketing potential?
No More Aisles—No More Genres?
Bookstores arrange books in aisles by genre categories. Browsing for e-books has no ‘aisles.’ E-books are not simply displayed in genre groups–a link can take the shopper from medical narrative to travel narrative to science fiction with a click, not a trek through a bookstore. This has enormous potential to break down genres, or at least facilitate boundary-crossing. This challenges the existing, genre-based marketing model. How will readers of e-devices answer the question –‘what’ are you reading? With a genre? An author’s name? A book title? Or simply a knowing smile.
Flipping Books, Not Just Pages.
E-readers are often praised for their ability to hold hundreds, perhaps thousands of books. The device even conveniently remembers where the reader left off for each and every book. At the very least this makes for unforgiving readers; little errors (lapses in plot pace, poorly executed scenes, stilted dialogue) aren’t skipped over, they are potential deal-breakers, a reason to flip to another book. This makes it imperative for writers to ensure that every sentence in their work is gripping. EVERY sentence.
Reading Vertically, Horizontally, and Three-Dimensionally—or The Demise of the ‘Book’
In paper books, one page leads to another, and if some readers ‘jump’ between pages, then the assumption is that they are missing something. In e-readers, one page does not have to lead to just one next page. Hyperlinks pose extensive possibilities for meaningful ‘skipping’. Imagine a book that allowed the reader to click on a selection of hyperlinks at the end of a passage—taking them to any number of ‘next’ pages. Can authorial control be flexible enough to accommodate such uncontrolled sequencing? Can the definition of a book expand to encompass other media (music, pictures, mini-movies) as one of the possible ‘next pages?’
Size Doesn’t Matter
Books, the physical items, are the size they are because of human physiology—they are big enough to make a number of words legible; small enough to be manipulated with one hand or two. The physical size of books has limited the length of written works, particularly fiction. E-devices don’t get heavier with more pages, nor does the cost of their production increase directly with their length. Does this justify a return to longer works? Or, as part and parcel of the generation that seems increasingly focused on shorter and quicker, do e-devices lend themselves to shorter works?
What do You Think?
These are the things I’ve been thinking about when it comes to the electronic book revolution. It is a time of great potential, but also of great fear. Will the e-book be as transformative of reading as the printing press? I would love to hear what other writers have been musing on.
artwork “subway girl” courtesy of benlo at deviant art.com
Jeanne Kisacky trained to be an architect before going back to her first love–writing. She studied the history of architecture, has written and published nonfiction, and has taught college courses. She is the author of Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870-1940.
E-Readers. The literary version of the liquor store’s brown paper sack!
Totally. I’ve been waiting for the e-book cover manufacturers to catch on to that and offer the ‘paper bag’ model. :-)
I LOVE my Kindle and am 100% sold out on e-books. But I DO miss book covers. Some e-books don’t have a cover (but this tends to be older books I download) and of course, at least on my version of Kindle, they are not in color.
Sure, I may glance at a cover for a few seconds at most during the whole reading experience, but I still miss them.
Our society as a whole over-caters to the attention deficit crowd (which to me isn’t a good thing) so I can see chapters becoming no more than a couple of pages per in e-book format.
Even so, being able to transport 30 years worth of reading material around in my purse at will makes it all worth it. 8-)
Great post! I have to say, I’m not sure I agree about the cover/genre issue, though. Statistics show over and over that an appealing cover is a HUGE factor in how well an e-book sells. And the categories an e-book is placed in on Amazon, for example–ie the genre–play a huge role in how the book is ranked, sales-wise, and Amazon’s computer algorithms recommend and market it to readers. If you’re thinking of e-publishing, I can from personal experience say that it’s definitely worth the time to research how to get your books into the proper categories to maximize sales!
Such an insightful post!
And, if teens have their own e-device, that makes it easier to “sneak-read” the modern day equivalents of Judy Blume. No more hiding tattered copies of Wifey and Forever books under one’s bed!
There’s been so much talk about the changes in traditional publishing, but I haven’t considered how e-devices will liberate authors in even more ways. Thanks for enlightening me!
they definitely take the sneak out of sneak reading. Maybe the less we have to hide what we love, the better.
Love the insights here. I agree with Anna, though, about the ongoing importance of covers. One has only to look at the music industry to see how vibrant and important covers are for making music purchases online.
One has to accept the reality of the phenomena, with all its effects, both good and bad. Thanks for pointing out things had hadn’t thought about.
What an interesting topic!
When I did a book signing for The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken, more than a couple of young professional women said they wanted the ebook version because they read when they travel for work, and they didn’t want their bosses to see them reading commercial women’s fiction.
“What do you read when the boss is watching?” I asked one.
“The Economist. Always,” she said immediately. Her friend nodded in agreement.
Funny? Yes, but I could relate. When I flew with my boss, I used to stick to the major daily papers and industry rags. The ereader liberates a generation of business travels to use schlepping time better.
I doubt covers will go anywhere anytime soon. People need images to scroll through in the ebook online shop. And I hope it’s not an excuse to bring back the tome.
The very first ebook I read was a bestseller about witches that should have been about 60% shorter. I almost never criticize other writers but this book needed a zealous editor.
BK, Anna, and Vaughn, I agree that covers aren’t going away (I like them, too) but ebooks might mean rethinking what a cover image is. The traditional ‘cover’ art works in amazon and e-bookstores, to make the ebook visible among all the other similar books. But ereaders lose the other half of the benefits of covers–displaying to the world at large what’s being read.
I can imagine in the future that someone will figure out how to put a book cover ‘banner’ across the top of every single page of an e-book, which would imitate some of the publicity of paper covers. It would also dilute the ‘privacy’ of the reading matter.
I guess I was trying to ask what should an e-book ‘cover’ be?
Maria, love the economist anecdote. E readers most definitely make business trips calmer–you can get away from the ‘work’ without visibly losing your professional image.
I favor novellas (15 novellas to 2 novels) in deference to that attention-deficite generation to which you referred. Nonetheless, I get feedback comments saying, ‘Gee, it ended too soon.’ Sigh. What’s a mother to do?
Interesting ideas. Don Maass was also talking about the death of genre at the Surrey International Writers Conference a week ago.
I agree with the others who said covers will continue to play a big role in readers decisions to buy.
But you’re right. They will likely evolve to add new functions.You’ll click the cover to see the book trailer, or launch media offering a preview of the book, etc.
Hmmm….
See, I hadn’t even thought of these questions, so I’m glad I’m reading this. I’m a late adopter of the ebook trend. I certainly found that I’m much more likely to give up on a book I’m not enjoying than I will with a printed book…I bought one book, starting finding it stupid and skipped to the back and read then end–and there it was. I would have been much more reluctant to do that with a printed book (but I still have been known to do it).
What I find interesting is how much having ereaders plays into impulse buying. Amazon is one thing but ten seconds after seeing an “ad” on my nook and poof–the book is in my hands… How precious getting ad space on those readers will be…much more important even than getting good product placement in the bookstores. Interesting.
I think the erotica genre is going to explode (unintentional pun is unintentional).
I think that you shouldn’t judge anything that happens too quickly. We all see things only from our perspective and if we could have stop for a moment to consider some other options I guess our world would have seen different today.
Interesting questions and good discussion on the cover. I still like covers – they give me some idea of the thrust of the book, even more than genre-naming. But even though e-books don’t add weight as they add pages, I do not believe books will become longer. If anything, they will become shorter, as a generation accustomed to tweets isn’t apt to have the patience to wade through a longer book.
I dread the thought of ‘texting’ vocabulary creeping into books. Is it inevitable?
So. Much. Good. Stuff! You’ve brought up a lot of great points about how ereaders/ereading can benefit us. I don’t think they will be AS revolutionary as the printing press… but who knows, it’s a new frontier with a lot to be discovered.
I agree with other commenters, though, that covers still play an important role. Genres/categories, however, may be somewhat broken down with the help of cross-shelving and tagging, yes. I think that’s starting to happen with physical books anyway, as more writers combine and experiment, and readers respond positively.
I am fascinated by the rise of ebooks and the opinions people have about paper vs digital . The industry is definitely changing. I am a huge ebook fan , almost all of what I am reading now is in digital form . Cover art is very important to me , I still love a beautiful cover and they are stunning on an iPad . I wouldn’t want a coverless book.
I am also spending more money on books because they are so accessible . Love your post.
As a writer, I find the lack of pressure to make a book a certain length very freeing. Is it 60,000 words? 80,000? 140,000? Does length matter as long as the story is complete? No longer does the cost of printing a book influence how long your book is allowed to be.
The ebook has also given new energy to the short story market. Imagine if Asimov were writing today!