I’m a bit torn on this matter. I do enjoy looking around a tube carriage and seeing what other people are perusing, but at the same time claim not to care too much about what people see in my hands. On a bit of further self examination I realised that this wasn’t entirely true, with Satan Burger (cover NSFW…or tube) sitting quite low on my to read pile (despite it being a rather interesting book) due to its cover and my deliberate seeking out of the non-film/tv tie-in versions of most books that I get to after the inevitable conversion takes place. But then again, for me that’s not necessarily about showing off to other people but often more of a choice as to which covers I feel look best – I recently grabbed the Red Riding Quartet and went for the tv tie-in covers because I thought they looked rather good (and were in a 3 for 2…).

My love of ebooks doesn’t preclude my love of book covers – it just reserves their appreciation to me, the reader, rather than the watchers around me. One of the things that has depressed me slightly about many of the ebooks I’ve bought is that they don’t put any effort into the cover, presenting just a bland and generic placeholder that tells me author name and book title.

Given that the print versions of books (as most of the ebooks I’ve grabbed are merely electronic versions of print) all have to have a cover that has at some time in its life gone through a computer (unless there are publishers out there who are producing ebooks but have a purely analogue print workflow) it strikes me as strange not to at least use that, rather than going through the minimally less effort of producing a new rubbish stock image. With part of the problem of the lack of acceptance of ebooks being their lack of perceived value for money (something that I am increasingly beset by, as publishers continue to charge hardback prices for ebooks even after paperback versions have hit eternal 3 for 2 pile status) the small effort of adding a sheen of quality to an ebook by adding a cover image (something that I do for all of my Gutenberg acquired books) seems like a simple way of trying to change that impression.

There is a potential for having ebook sleeves that you can insert cover art into, or an outward facing LCD screen that could display a book’s cover, however these have issues (mainly around effort and cost respectively) and at first glance don’t seem to be all that worthwhile. But I’ve known people who take Waitrose bags to Tesco and who wear knock off designer label clothing to give an impression that is different to reality. Being able to have a disconnect between what you are reading and what others perceive can be an important thing to some people. The importance of showing off to other people is something that has always been important with luxury items (a niche that books do still fall into in my opinion, unless you are a fan of book stew or hardback kebabs) and something that has already startes to extend into the world of the consumer ebook, with leather covers and custom ’skins’. I would claim not to be interested in such affectation, but am considering getting authors to sign my Sony Reader, so read into that what you will…

My most recent brush with a change in emphasis on who the appearance of something is for is the wonder of the Apple laptop. I stickered up my first MacBook, keeping the stickers in the same orientation as the glowing Apple symbol that adorns the lids of all portable Macs in recent times, and it was commented that I’d set it up in a ‘for you’ orientation – when open the Apple is the right way up for other people, but when closed it is upside down for the owner of the laptop. This change in Apple’s design happened a few years back and to me, at least, does seem to follow the way that Apple products have moved from niche to mainstream appeal, with their admirable attention to form becoming an advertisement for themselves in a similar fashion to Prada bags, Hackett tops and other fashion accessories. In contrast, the trusty corporate ThinkPad (now feeling like a knock-off of their former selves due to the lowering of quality since Lenovo took over the brand) has its logo minimally place in the lower right corner of the lid, the right way up for the user when they open the laptop – people don’t generally show off that they’re tapping away on their work machine…

Returning to books, though, one of the things I’ve seen recently from reading authors’ blogs is that they don’t always like the covers, with Charlie Stross and Neal Asher both occasionally commenting on the art adorning the editions of their books around the world. The cover of a book isn’t only a purely aesthetic thing – it’s all about the marketing. The multiply covered Harry Potter books showed that admirably, with the two very different market segments (kids and adults who wouldn’t be seen dead reading a kids book) catered for and also hitting up the obsessive completists for two copies of each book. However, sometimes I see a book where the cover seems to so widely miss the mark that I wonder what was going through the heads of the marketing people who approved it. Take my current read, McMafia by Misha Glenny. Originally subtitled “A Journey Through Global Organised Crime”, it has recently been rereleased and hit the 3 for 2 shelves just in time to make its way into my eager little hand. However, with the reprint they’ve change things slightly:

Now, that strikes me as a bit of a shift, rebranding a quite serious investigation into the development of organised crime throughout the world into a pithily subtitled popcorn book. So far, and I’m still working my way through eastern europe and Russia, the only people we’ve encountered who might resemble the young lady bending over stage center on this cover are the horrifically abused trafficked women sold by gangsters in northern Yugosalvia. I think I’d rather have an coverless ebook.

However I do not need any more tat in my house, especially as I have now destroyed any of the good work I’d done towards stopping the book mountain from taking over my living space by buying this.

How could I resist? The sacred words of St Heston complete with pretty photographs, illustrations by Dave McKean and a pile of scientific papers at the back. I’ve been wandering to my local Books Etc at lunchtimes to have a flick through it’s silver edged pages, so I decided to give in to temptation and buy it. I even paid Amazon for postage so that it’ll turn up sooner. I suspect that I will never cook a recipe from within its rather excellent pages, but that also strikes me as not being the point. As much as I have been fighting recently against my love of owning books as artifacts, concentrating on the actual contents instead, this one strokes the “thing” coveting side of my personality in such an intimate manner that I could not resist. It may well be the most expensive book that I’ve ever bought, but I can’t see how it won’t be worth it.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair to have a look at some books, as I’ve heard that they may make my new purchase look cheap and as such I think my wallet should stay safely in my pocket. It’s all research for a session that Annie Mole and I have proposed (well, she proposed it, I seconded it) for Amplified 08 on The Future of The Book – anything that I can use as an excuse to have a look at and covet shiny books sounds good to me. If I have time after the fair I’m going to try and follow it up with a trip along to Handmade & Bound, a handmade book, comic and ‘zine fair. Having tinkered with the high-tech, sterile world of the ebook for the last few weeks this delving to the other side of the spectrum will hopefully even up my views on the future of the printed word.