A recent article in The Chronicle gives an interesting account of the process involved in selecting book cover art. Stephanie A. Shields (who is a Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University) tells the story of how she searched for and chose an image for the cover of Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion — with guidance from editors and publishers, of course.
A recent article in The Chronicle gives an interesting account of the process involved in selecting book cover art. Stephanie A. Shields (who is a Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University) tells the story of how she searched for and chose an image for the cover of Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion — with guidance from editors and publishers, of course.Shields talks about the use of stock photography companies over random Web searching, the need for the cover to convey a specific emotion, and, of, course, the marketing value of the chosen design: "I also found out that, for advertising purposes, an effective cover needs to look good on the Web, in black and white, and as a one-inch-by-two-inch image." True, since library users are probably more likely to see cover art through something like WorldCat’s Amazon-style cover images than they are when reading the book itself, as many libraries simply throw away dust jackets for new titles. [This practice isn’t questioned enough, and is a big flaw with library preservation systems, right next to the problem that I can’t read old Calvin & Hobbes strips in a "full text" newspaper database. What would Nicholson Baker say?]
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