Book Covers: Why So Nasty?
Reader Matthew Wigdahl recently wrote me with an interesting query:
"Hey, I also had a quick question for you. My colleagues and I were talking about a "Faded Stars" (working title) program in our school library, wherein we have some staff pick out a few of the old tattered books from the shelves and feature them somehow. As we pulled old books to consider, we got to talking about the (I’m just going to say it) ugliness of many of them. For example, we have a copy of Mr. Popper’s Penguins with no dust jacket and bound in what appears to be cardboard covered with gray house paint. We started wondering if anyone prints new dust jackets for old books. I did a little research and found several websites who do this for rare books, at a high cost. Do you know of any publishers or organizations who print shiny new covers for older (children’s!?) books? It seems like it would be a great service for libraries. We got to brainstorming and thought we might even have students draw new covers for the books. Anything to give them new life."
Okay, I’m just going to take a step back here and say that this is a brilliant idea. Picture it. You’re a librarian with a small budget. You want to sex up the 10+ years old children’s books in your collection, particularly the ratty ones, but you don’t have the money to buy new books. Besides, that ancient edition of Prince Caspian is still good, it just happens to look like this:
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When, if you had the chance to buy something bright and shiny, it could look like this:
So you go to the Harper Collins website and order some new bookcovers for your books. The publisher has been careful to include a list of different sizes, so make sure you pick the right one. Badda bing, badda boom, you now look like you own a whole new collection of shiny, beautiful books. And as long as the insides are still in one piece, it’s all good.
Now I can see publishers getting all wary, worrying that new sparkly covers would cut into their booksales. But basically, in my experience hardcover books are never replaced when they need new covers. They’re replaced when they fall to pieces, are covered in chocolate, are eaten by the dog, etc. etc. And if you get kids reading sparkly library copies (interiors unchanged) then they in turn are going to want to go to the bookstore to buy the books themselves. It’s win-win! Libraries can compete with bookstores in terms of pretty books on the shelves. Publishers can earn money in new and exciting ways.
In a way, my library does this with our VHS tapes. Oh yeah , we still circulate VHS. Not everything is available on DVD these days, I’m afraid. Plus I had a man in here yesterday praising the skies above for our VHS edition of The Red Balloon. Baffling but true. And when I put a tape’s cover inside a bright and shiny new box, it’s given a whole new lease on life. Suddenly Beethoven II is looking a lot nicer to the kids. What can I say? We’re a generation of magpies.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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Well, win-win-lose actually. Who doesn’t get a piece of this new pie? The one whose imagination brought you the book in the first place–the author. Sales for paperbacks, for new editions, would fall through the floor. The publisher would never put the book OP as long as the COVER for gosh sakes, is selling. Which means an author couldn’t resell to another publisher and bring out a new shiny edition and get paid a bit (just a bit) of money.
Teachers, librarians, readers all think that children’s books authors are J. K. Rowling, as rich as the queen. Not so. The average children’s book writer makes between $5-10,000 dollars a year on their writing.
Jane
I’ve had this conversation with librarians and with publishing reps in the past. The reps have always been enthusiastic but indeed are wary of the costs of it catching on in a way where they have entire print runs dedicated to library replacement covers.
The librarians I’ve talked to would rather replace hardcover with reinforced paperbacks — the kids complain hardcovers are too heavy to lug around in their backpacks and, true or not, if perception prevents kids from even looking at a book then why fight the battle.
And without suggesting that writing is an altruistic hobby, we’re talking about libraries here, Jane. Why not suggest they collect author fees each time a book is checked out? Why not have publishers print “library editions” with the last chapter replaced by an offer to sell the ending to the reader, either by mail or website, for a small fee. Yes, writers are underpaid, but asking libraries to correct the situation by constantly repurchasing an author’s books isn’t the answer.
Here in Canada, writers are compensated for the use of their work in libraries. The program is called Public Lending Right and is administered through the Canada Council. We’re not rich as queens either, but it does help.
Actually, it’s more a cost effectiveness thing. Book jackets cost money to print and inventory, especially at such low numbers. And once the jacket changes (the Narnia jackets, for example, have been changed a number of times in the past decade), no one will want the ones you have in stock, so you’ll have to trash those and overprint the new jackets.
The real solution is for some enterprising nut to shanghai a print-on-demand device and have a digital library of jackets that libraries can buy at several bucks a pop (because that’s what it would cost).
A pity, because those old books *are* wonderful and they do look like something snoozier than a sackful of Ambien and a big fluffy pillow. But expecting the publishers to foot the bill seems a bit unlikely. 🙁
Cost effectiveness? Ask the publishing houses how many books, how much — in tons — they put through a pulper each day as a result full-price returns from chain booksellers. The cost of that is worked into the price of the book. Am I expected to believe that they would really sweat the cost of destroying a mere fraction of a percent of the money they pulp daily for paper covers when they feel no compunction for all those unsold “bestsellers”?
Clearly, Jane, I look at it from a librarian perspective. Many school libraries or small public systems can’t afford to replace old defunct hardcover copies of titles. If they could simply buy covers to make the books circulate it would solve some of their budget problems right there. True, it would be shockingly naive to think that a publisher would think to give any percentage of a cover sale to an author. But I can’t see this as cutting into a writer’s total sales since there’s a possibility that the primary groups doing the purchasing wouldn’t have bought the actual book anyway. Plus, as David correctly points out, this wouldn’t even touch on paperback sales. My library system allows us a very large paperback budget, one per branch, and we spend the entire year supplementing our nasty dilapidated hardcovers with shiny pretty paperbacks (which the kids prefer anyway). When those books are out of print, however, how nice it would be to be able to buy new covers for their long-lasting hardcover equivalents.
How do people feel about the intriguing idea of young library patrons designing covers of their own for old books? I think that it would be an interesting way to get at least a handful of kids to read these ‘faded stars’ and hopefully in turn be inspired to create artful covers for them. It could teach kids a lot about what a book cover means when they are asked to pick a moment or character from a story to represent it to the rest of the readers.
Does this mean you can judge a book by its cover?
That’s a rhetorical question of course, because, of course, we all do to some extent … most especially children. (I also think you can judge a bottle of wine by its label.)
Oh, the possibilities! Here are some now:
google “read it before Hollywood does”
And, if the abovementioned entrepreneur offered fresh dust jackets printed on Tyvek, or some stiff, hard to tear substance preglued on the short ends, major sections of any library could be given a major facelift in no time.
Since I’m in the midst of a school library weeding project, this post really hit home for me. Many of the books I have removed from the collection are on the chopping block due in part to the fact that they appear dated and worn out. But really, most of the interiors are serviceable. It would be great to have the option of recovering. Here’s hoping a system is created to get this done that pleases all interested parties. (That sight you see in the sky is indeed pigs flying).
If anyone has any of my books going into the pulper :(oh noes)
please, please send them to me, honest, su casa trash is mi casa gold. We can work out shipping arrangements. Contact at http://www.melaniehopegreenberg.com
It made me laugh that the book mentioned as being covered with housepaint was Mr. Popper’s Penguins, a book about a housepainter.
-Susan
I did have my kids draw new dust covers for old books when I was a librarian, and it worked like a charm. Not only did my artistic types have an our let to display their talent, but the students loved checking out the books with the “new” hand-drawn covers.
I LOVE the idea of having students design new covers. They could be laminated and then put on the books. It could even be done in cooperation with the teachers as a new kind of “book report” project. They’d read the book to come up with the best, most relevant and representative cover for that book. And maybe on the inside leaf they could have their first name and their grade level or something. How fun for the artists and for students checking out the books!
Totally different direction, but I’m glad that you still circulate VHS. We’ve just eliminated all our VHS and I hate it because some families/day cares/preschools don’t have DVD. The adult collection is going too–but that’s a boon for me because I can get “The Philadelphia Story” and others for 50 cents!
So many great comments here! Thanks for posting the question, Elizabeth! It looks like the best (or at least most likely to actually happen) idea is to have students create new jackets for old books. I imagine books would just fly off the shelves if they were bound in the colorful creations – including summaries, reviews and researched about-the-author jacket flaps – made by their admired classmates! I’m on it!