Great book designs

I know that I'm not the first to make this connection. I knew about the top two books, "eat pray" and "drink play", but found "eat nap" at the library yesterday.

Evidently either book designers have a very limited imagination, or a successful design that sells well is worth copying in hoping of boosting sales.

My wife read "eat pray" and I read "drink play". We'll probably both read "eat nap". I think that is probably a limited crossover of the demographic of all three books. (Think Venn diagram.)

A great cover design grabs readers attention. For a long time Penguin stuck with simplified designs based on categorization by colour. Green for mysteries, Black for the Classics, Grey for Modern Classics etc. There is a story that when Terry Waite was being held in Lebanon (1987-1991) he wanted to get a book to read. His captors spoke no English so he drew a picture of a penguin knowing that any book published by Penguin would be worth reading. Pretty fabulous endorsement.

If you are interested in book design there are some great resources. I found this site, The Book Cover Archive. (http://bookcoverarchive.com)

But we should all remember the maxim, don't judge a book by its cover.