Monday 18 June 2012

Musing Mondays #13

This meme is hosted by Should be Reading.

Every week a new 'musing' question is posted by the host for all participants to answer in their own posts.

This week's musing is:

I read an article, this past week, about book covers, and the difference between print & digital covers; about how the digital covers have almost disappeared entirely, while publishers decide to just skip right to the content.
What do you think about this? Do you think the book cover is “dead”? Do you care whether the “covers” on digital books exist or not?

After scanning through the article (which is all I really have time to do at the moment), it seems to me that this is just an essay on the history of the book cover, and about the different kinds of imagery used on modern book covers.
I do not, in any way, think that the book cover is dead. So many people, when the kindle came out and started to spread like wildfire, predicted the demise of the print book as we know it, but this is just not going to happen. People will always have a need and a love for the physical book. I work in a book shop, here in the UK, and I can confirm that the love of the printed book is far from dwindling - it's going strong!
As for 'The Covers are Dead', no they're not. Print books have covers, and that's what I think matters.

My eBook Cover!
Yes, I do want to see a beautiful cover when I pick up a physical book, but when I pick up an eBook, I don't care about the cover. This is because I don't physically close it and pop it back on my shelf while I'm not reading it, I just turn my eReader off, and then when I turn it back on again, it's still on the same page that I left it on. To me, my Kindle is like the book cover - and I do have a Kindle skin (which is very pretty - purple, of course - and has an anime-style woman holding an umbrella - see photo!).
An eBook, to me, is just about experiencing the text, and not about experiencing the book as a whole, like you do with a physical book (flicking through the pages is one of my habits when I'm reading a paperback!).
So, to answer the final question there, no I don't particularly care whether or not my eBook has a cover - it doesn't matter one little bit, as long as I can still read the book.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh I still like the cover, basically because I have a visual memory. I tend to remember the name of the book via the image of the cover better than just remembering the book name itself, does that make sense? OY I spent a long time on this and I lost some of what I wanted to say because I Had to edit it down from 5K to blog length! (NEW FOLLOWER BTW LOVE the look of your blog *wink* going to have to spend a long time her!)

Here is my MUSING MONDAYS

TP said...

I also like the cover because when I'm trying to choose a book to read, the cover can lure me in, even if I will eventually purchase it in digital format (which I don't have an eReader at the mo).

Tanya
Girlxoxo.com

Anonymous said...

I love book covers! It's the first thing that draws me to a book, and I love closing the book at the end and thinking about how the cover refers to the story I've just read. Even on ereaders (though I'm using my mum's iPad at the moment which is in colour, so perhaps that changes it) I think it's important to have a cover - it makes a book much more memorable if you can attach an image to a title. Great post!

Dani Cotton said...

I get what people are saying about associating the book cover to the book, but I find that on an actual eBook it doesn't matter so much, for the reasons I've mentioned in my post, but also because we use the internet so much these days, that I see the book cover anyway - either on goodreads or whilst blogging about it, so it ends up not making too much difference.

But I do understand that you guys want a pretty cover to look at - and so do I! This is why I have more physical books than eBooks :P

Dani :)

Cathy De Los Santos said...

That is one too cute kindle skin that's for sure. Great answer, but i know i still care for the cover as I'm an avid ebook reader I still need to see it lol. Here's my Musing

Kwizgiver said...

What a great answer! I'm a bit of a cover snob, they're still important to me. I look up covers online before I buy ebooks, so the covers can sway my purchase.

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