Killed Book Jackets

Few people outside the book industry--outside of the houses that actually produce books, really--know of the hair-rending angst that can go into making book jackets work. Book designers can be difficult to work with (says me, the editor), and editors oftentimes have ideas that are hackneyed or difficult to execute (or non-ideas that they think are ideas: "Don't use pink."). Sometimes no one is really sure what the focus on the book should be. And even if everyone knows exactly what they should be doing, lines of communication are dotted, especially when the in-house design manager is using freelancers, who may or, more likely, may not get any facetime with the person in control of the book. And at some houses the editor is taken out of the equation altogether--not even to mention the author.

More's the shame because packaging--the jacket, blurbs, copy on the flaps--is the single most important thing the publisher can do for a book.

That's all a lead up to why I found this article--Kill Your Darlings--on jacket revisions at Print magazine so illuminating. Print asked 8 designers to "show us their favorite runners-up, and to explain how and why these covers were nixed."