You Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover

The book as we know it has been around for more than two thousand years. Pliny the Younger witnessed the shift from the roll to the codex, in which the papyrus or parchment (vellum) sheets or signatures were stitched and placed between covers. Since then, papermaking, image reproduction and binding technologies have made endless breakthroughs. Contemporary book jackets reflect this, but increasingly often books don't: their content may be fine, but their production
is not.
Attractive jackets help sell books, and must-buy biography or history volumes display well-produced cover art, with distinctive lettering. A price of $25.95 or so (probably discounted) seems reasonable for a hefty 350 pages, with twenty pages of illustrations. Many browsers are visibly delighted with what they pull randomly from the shelves, handling a book with care, leafing through the text, fixing upon illustrations, and examining notes and index with obvious pleasure before heading for the checkout. Yet it is not uncommon to see potential purchasers flip through two or three books, frown, and walk way obviously
disappointed. Clearly, that first quick examination revealed that physically, the book did not meet expectations. What are reasonable expectations? And what failings to meet them turn off buyers? Here's a list of concerns that are surely not
unreasonable if hardcover books are supposed
to combine quality of content with quality of presentation and production.
Binding and casing should be durable yet flexible. All too often, sewn signatures have given way to "perfect" (i.e., glued) binding. Physical pressure is often needed to keep perfect-bound books open; they tend to spring out of their casing or crack apart, and most acquire a lean to the right.
Boards (usually quarter-cloth and boards) have long since replaced more expensive full-cloth bindings. For reasons unknown, boards are most often clad in pale-hued papers that register every fingerprint: surely they could be treated to be stain-resistant.
Paper should be bright and treated to resist browning. If thin (generally preferable to bulked up), paper should be opaque; type showing through from the verso is a major irritant. Jackets should be tear-resistant and, if laminated, not liable to early peeling of the overlay.
Type should be clean, clear, and pleasing in jackets, headings, and text. A wide range of excellent, time-tested bookface fonts exists. Fonts designed for posters, advertisements, catalogs, invitations, and numerous other special purposes seldom serve well for books. Sans serif, vertically or horizontally compressed, or overly light or heavy fonts may be great fun to play with, but very seldom suit books.
Leading (the spacing between lines) has to be carefully considered in the design stage. Too tight or too generous leading tires the eye.
Proportional spacing between letters and words is a necessity; hyphenation is needed to preclude excessive white space.
Illustration has become the most disappointing aspect of many books. A modest number of trade books include superb color plates, clean (possibly enhanced) black-and-white photographs, and crisp line drawings. A great many other books offer portraits with near-featureless white-splodge faces under grey thatch, all definition lost against even darker backgrounds. Travel books, cookbooks, computer manuals, and many thousands of ordinary publications manage fine illustration. Current newsprint reproductions of the surface of Mars are cleaner and brighter than illustrations in many fully priced trade books~definitely an indictment.
Today paperbacks dominate sales. For decades the higher-quality lines have made desirable books available in less costly
yet still durable formats, and budget-conscious buyers have benefited. Publication in paperback has also been a means of bringing many books to readers in cases where initial expense or limited markets have precluded
hardcover production. Paperbacks continue to deliver these benefits.
Some publishers make every effort to ensure that their books are attractive; others seem less concerned~and their books show it. The following are among the most annoying production deficiencies: over-stiff covers requiring physical creasing to allow access to the text; cramped margins (particularly center gutters so narrow that the reader breaks the binding in attempting to bring text into sight); eye-straining type. Add to these paper so poor that it browns during reading, and indistinct illustrations or maps. Equally annoying is the omission of illustrations, maps, notes, etc. that were present in the hardcover and are still listed in the paperback front matter.
For a person not trained in production-costing to rail against reduced standards is not entirely fair. Consideration must be given to publishers' problems~of which ever-rising costs is frequently cited as the most critical. Predictable costs can be swelled by unpredictable ones (delayed text delivery, rights and permissions, legal problems, bibliographic research, skilled indexing, etc.). Nonetheless, there is a strong case to be made for returning to earlier, higher standards in production, ensuring that the traditional book, whether a biography, a history, or a novel, whether hardbound or softbound, offers visible, palpable, lasting quality throughout.
A careful check of what's on the shelves in
any bookstore reveals a surprising variation in quality. Many books are well produced: good paper, pleasing design, attractive type, and (when needed) good-quality illustrations on coasted stock. Other books display all the faults. The breakdown is not between "good production" publishers and "poor production" ones. Almost always a publisher issues some well-produced and some poorly produced books~and the poorly produced book may cost the consumer more than the
better produced one of roughly equal size and importance.
Can the publishing industry expect the
bookstore browser to buy a trade hardcover or higher-priced paperback if it disappoints upon
initial inspection? Can publishers expect the book to remain a choice for gift-giving if it may exhibit production deficiencies and display acute economy of production? The answer can hardly be yes.
It is likely that within easy sight of a poorly produced book the store will be offering DVDs, CDs, videos, tapes, computer-based games, and related personal and/or gift items. These come attractively packaged and most often guarantee quality of content: there is little chance of major disappointment. Add to the book-buyer's choices such items as posters, calendars, cookbooks,
pet-care books, beauty and grooming guides, recreation handbooks, home-decoration manuals, and how-to books. Many of these offer surprisingly attractive typography and illustration; not a few make an increasing number of biography, history, travel, literature, and poetry volumes seem dull and dowdy.
Certainly a majority of trade books, and a high proportion of books from the small press universe (which now exceeds $35 billion per year in sales) are still published with pride and reflect a concern for quality. Yet it is all too easy to find books that disappoint in quality of design or paper or type style or illustration. Often by the accident of title, author's name, or theme, they stand cover-to-cover with their better-quality brethren, calling attention to their own deficiencies. Surely, when for every poorly produced book others of similar size and length offer the buyer higher quality at the same price, quality production must become an imperative for every book. A publisher's catalog should not be the firm's most distinguished product.
Ecclesiastes advised: "Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." May the publishing industry, with its immense resource of talented professionals, strive to make every book a thing of beauty, offering reading that is a joy rather than a weariness.
(Peter Skinner admits to spending too much time in bookstores, too much attentiveness observing potential purchasers replacing books they examine, and too much inquisitiveness asking them why.)