Related Articles in the Press:

It Ain't Easy Being Green (Slate, 11/22/06)

How To Choose A Book By Its Cover (Bookslut, 10/02)

They've Got It Covered (The Guardian, 11/15/01)

Cursive On The Cover Spells Romance
According to Publishers, Book Cover Design Is Still All About Guts and Pop. But Could There Be A Science Behind The Art?

FROM PUBLISHING TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2007)

Most prescient (and perhaps even most sentient) book buyers, browsers, and readers can identify standard cover equations. Fabio + floral + cursive = romance. Dark colors + gold embossed type + shadowy figure = thriller. Legs + high heels + shopping bags = chick lit.

But beyond the obvious and cliché, some factors are harder to pinpoint. What does serif versus sans serif signify? Is the average book buyer more likely to pick up a red book or a blue one? Should the figure on the cover be shown from the waist up? The waist down? In a photograph? Illustration? Collage?

While magazines routinely hire branding consultants to help them determine what covers and cover elements sell best on the stands and in stores, publishers have yet to turn the art of jacket design into a science. Instead, they say, it’s all about gut feeling and “pop.”

“You just know when you see it,” Anne Marie Tallberg, Marketing Director/Griffin Trade Paper, St. Martin’s Press told Publishing Trends. “We’re all just going for that big book look – fresh, but not totally out of left field.”

Dan Harvey, ex-Penguin honcho and current Trident marketing director agreed. “A lot of people have torn their hair out over millions and millions of jackets – you just think that there’s nothing new, and then you see it.”

Instincts aside, could there be a scientific approach? PT checked in with publishers, booksellers, and bona-fide branding professionals to see if there is – or should be – a method to their madness.

The Shimmery Blue That Stole Rodale’s Heart

Rodale wanted to design a diet title that readers wouldn’t be embarrassed to carry, something that was strong enough to act as a flagship design, even as the brand expanded. Which they say, they intended from the beginning.

“When we created the South Beach Diet, we were looking for a jacket that did not look like a diet book,” Cindy Ratzlaff, VP Brand Marketing said. “Instead, we were looking for something that looked more like women’s fiction.”

The final cover wasn’t a fluke. The design process involved an internal focus group of over 50 people weighing in on over 60 prospective covers. “It took a long time to get it right,” Ratzlaff said. “We were looking at art deco, Miami, water, people on the shore. It wasn’t until the designer brought in the winning cover late in the game. The entire room did this intake of breath. We knew it was the one.”

In talking about the cover, Ratzlaff discusses all of the elements – the large serif typeface, the hint of a palm tree in the background – but she highlights the “shimmery blue” that has become the biggest signifier of the brand. It’s the same blue that now identifies nearly all South Beach products (like the blue dot on your Grey Poupon that tells you Agatston approves). The South Beach blue has became so intrinsically entwined with the brand, Ratzlaff said, that Rodale decided against black and white ads altogether – since its absence would hurt more than the advertising would help.
Even when the colors veer from the blue, Ratzlaff said that they were careful to keep design elements in sync. “When we extended the brand into cookbooks, we kept the quality the same,” she said. “Even on the second cookbook cover which is copper, there is still the same shimmery tone as the original book.”

“Book buying is emotional,” she said. “The touch, the feel, the quality of the paper – it’s your first marketing tool.”

Although easily hailed as a branding triumph, it seems fairly obvious that if any book would succeed in the branded world, it would be a book like The South Beach Diet. But not every book can be – or even strives to be – a multi-platform sales phenom. Is it possible to brand titles from other categories in similar ways? Could literary fiction find its shimmery blue?

David Rogers, Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, is the first to point out that there’s no single formula for success. Everything communicates, and in a world where not only companies and products, but countries, institutions, and people are increasingly focused on branding themselves, every detail and related association counts.

“Covers are a really powerful branding tool,” Rogers said. “It’s like product placement.”

Some suggestions for the publishing industry? Rogers said that with new authors, it is more important to launch the book, or series as a brand than the author, yet when an author does become an established brand, their name is the equivalent of a magazine masthead.

“Any repeating commercial writer will have a type image – a continuing logo or style,” Dan Harvey said. “Patterson, Cornwell, Grisham – they all consistently use the same typeface, and usually have somewhat similar jackets. Janet Evanovich is almost always the same, and Tom Clancy just uses that font and that’s all he needs. Almost no art is needed. You can’t do that with a literary novelist,” he said. “The books are for a consistent audience, but there’s not the same need to be slavish to a style.”

Rogers also pointed out that although visuals are more powerful than words, titles are probably more important than covers - your friend Betsy would most likely tell you to read The Interpretation of Murder, not that black book with red type and the lady in the box. Titles, like covers, must create a distinct impression, and because we live in a search economy, Rogers stressed the importance of researching spelling (and possible misspellings). Words do have power: Bookreporter.com’s Carol Fitzgerald points to the results of a TeenReads survey in which respondents were asked “What makes you pick up/buy a book?” Of the more than 1700 who answered, 20.7% mentioned the description on the flap or back of book; 17.8% mentioned an interesting title; 16.7% said a friend had influenced them; 16.5% said it was author recognition; 15.1% said nice cover; 6.9% said it was cover blurb; 5.8% mentioned the quote on the cover or a review. In other words, more than 70% were influence by words, rather than design.

And increasingly, as books are sold online, publishers are designing for the web. Fitzgerald said that metallics and embossed covers don’t translate to digital, so designers are moving away from them for books that are likely to have an online life. Some web marketers tell PT that they sometimes lighten jackets so that they are easier to read on a screen.

Purple, Yellow, & 2006’s Obsession with the ¾ turn

“Trends become very obvious when you’re standing and looking at 2,000 titles,” Joe Drabyak, Principal at the Chester County Book & Music Company said. “For the longest time ‘truck-stop’ fiction featured feet,” he said. “A leg in a combat boot with the enemy in the distance, it was always feet. In literary fiction on the other hand, there were a lot of backs this year. Women peering over their shoulders, a three-quarter turn. I don’t really know where that’s coming from.” After a pause, he added, “Maybe it’s a sort of sophistication, elegance, blending elements from the fashion world. The message is: this is rich, sophisticated, literary.”

In the world of trend analysis, cultural catalysts are difficult to define, and can be interpreted in any number of disparate ways (Rogers attributed the feet and back trend to “the fetishes of the designers”).

A recent New Yorker article examining the color forecasting industry, described the process by which seasonal palates are chosen by the Color Marketing Group – the industry’s most influential organization. Experts suggest hues according to national mood – grayed colors due to the war in Iraq; deep colors to evoke domestic safety; colors influenced by the attendant oil crisis; Asia and India’s increasing roles in the global economy; and of course, the American public’s perpetual hankering for discount-luxe goods.

Books – although less tuned in to the next big color as, say, Marc Jacobs – are still affected by trends; note the recent resurgence of neon on both the shelves and on the runway. Some preferences are pure fancy, but others have historical precedent rooted (at least somewhat) in reason. Green, for instance, is a much maligned color in both magazine and book publishing. Recent theories suggest that the aversion has something to do with the fact that it tended to be a difficult color to print, to the notion that fluorescent lights reflect poorly off the hue turning it into a weird blue. But some blues are pure gold, as South Beach and You On A Diet can attest. Martha Levin, EVP and Publisher of Free Press, mentioned that the authors of You On A Diet were insistent that only a certain blue be used on the cover. “It took us forever to match the color they wanted but everyone comments on it. It looks good online too.”

Even as myths are debunked and technology advances, color preferences remain. Harvey said that yellow is one of the most striking colors for trade fiction and even non-fiction. “Hot yellow jackets really pop in stores,” he said. For romance however, the rules are different. Prior to working at St. Martin’s, Tallberg worked first as a bookseller, and then as a buyer for Borders. As a buyer she discovered that, “Purple is the power color for romance. Yellow, however, is dangerous. Yellow always made me nervous.”

Focus Groups, Barbie, and Bucking the Trend

Publishers, for the most part, are wary of turning design into a science. “Branding exists to a certain extent, but it’s a little more subtle,” Paolo Pepe, VP Executive Cover Art Director at Bantam said. Echoing many publishers’ reactions, Pepe said that the main indicators are usually what’s going on in the marketplace. The type of book is obviously a factor – be it commercial, mass market, mystery, thriller, etc.
Anne-Lise Spitzer, VP Marketing, Creative Director, Knopf, said that they do try to make sure that the books will stand out on the shelf, while still looking like they belong to certain categories.

Rogers said that this goal – to fit in while standing out – is one of the most difficult balances to master. “Something that is maximally obvious will have minimal differentiation, and vice versa,” he said. With big brands that have a lot of money to spend, differentiation helps break the product out from the pack. But with most books, there isn’t the budget to help the consumer identify a product by its brand elements.

St. Martin’s Tallberg agreed that for the most part, genre books will look more alike than different. “The thing is that focus groups will gravitate toward the tried and true,” she said. “They want to be able to peg it just by picking up the book.” Doing something different to make a book pop out in stores is a good idea, but that you still have to give readers what they want – “It shouldn’t be different for different’s sake,” she said.

Still, “a lot of it turns out to look identical,” Drabyak said. “With thrillers, if you put them face out, they’re all dark colors, there’s no pop.” Pepe said, “Bucking the trend is a good thing, but the same bookseller who said that all thrillers look alike might come back and say, ‘well, that doesn’t look like a thriller.’” Bantam will sometimes consider changing a cover that gets a negative response from buyers, if the size of the order warrants it.

Cathy Goldsmith, EVP Art Director at Random House Children’s also emphasized the importance that retail outlets, and their buyers, play in determining cover choice. “A cover that works at Wal-Mart is very different than a cover that works on Amazon,” she said. “You have to look where you’re likely to sell the most product, and then it’s their opinion that matters more.”

Like Goldsmith, Pepe said that it’s not unusual for Bantam to skew a cover toward a special market, or a big retailer like Costco where the customer base has different tastes from customers in bookstores. “Ideally, I don’t think that anyone wants to do four different covers for a book – it’s a lot of work – but if the market is there, then it’s possible.”

Ratzlaff said that in some cases, Rodale uses different covers on Direct to Consumer titles, although they don’t love doing it. “Direct to Consumer is very scientific,” Ratzlaff said. “There’s extensive online testing done, market research.”

In his book, Why We Buy, shopping scientist Paco Underhill takes a look at the bookstore landscape. Oddly, book browsers are likelier to buy after brief rather than extended encounters with books. So, first impressions are critical. Examining a children’s section, he notes that although titles are shelved with their audience in mind (old classics like Grimm's at adult eye-level, heavily branded Dora the Explorer near the floor), the covers themselves don’t do enough to communicate with prospective buyers. If a family member less familiar with the child’s reading level comes in, for example, there is usually little guidance on which books are intended for which age groups. For the most part, Underhill says, covers don’t maximize their merchandising power because book jacket designers don’t like to think of themselves as in the package design business.

Goldsmith agrees that books are indeed different. “The cover is the packaging, but it’s not torn off and thrown away. It’s part of the product,” she said.
Still, it depends who’s branding the book. Goldsmith says that mega-brands like Barbie, Nickelodeon and Thomas the Tank Engine have their own branding guidelines that describe where the logo should go, how big it should be, seasonal color palates, etc. “The thing is that most of that kind of branding has been developed for packaged goods,” Goldsmith said.

Whatever the factors, scientifically stimulated or not, it all comes down to that magical moment of reader meets book. “I think increasingly covers are important, and they’ll continue to become more and more important every year,” Goldsmith said. “Reps will say, buyers love this cover – and it’s that. If buyers love it, then they’re more likely to take it, and if they hate it, they’re more likely to pass on it. I think that is part of what started The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, people wanted to pick it up. If consumers don’t want to pick it up, then there’s no chance.”

©2007 Publishing Trends