I think it is a great misfortune that book spines are so narrow. They leave us almost entirely in the dark. All one can generally see of a book on the shelf, is the author’s name and the book’s title. All the beauty of the cover is hidden away and only revealed when it is pulled out. But, I suppose, it might be argued that this is a good thing. This way, one is pleasantly surprised when, taking down the book, one discovers that a uninviting, narrow spine with the title – “The Complete Works of Roland H. Beerbottom" hides a wonderful front cover displaying the most appealing black and white photograph of the balding, stoutish author sucking on his pipe in a darkened room beside a window through which a narrow beam of sunlight is shafting down onto the desk on which the dark liquid in a fine china teacup reflects the mother-of-pearl buttons of the distinguished gentleman’s white cotton shirt beneath his polka dot bow tie. Oh... and his fine, metal-framed glasses lie obliquely on the cup saucer. Yes... such a delightful discovery awaits us.
So, I take it back. I’m all for thin spines... and anyway, they make room for more books.
I am a lover of books, a bibliophile, in the true sense - a person who loves books both as objects, and for their contents. A bookworm (a distasteful term that sounds somewhat destructive and brings to mind those nasty, wiggly little tunnels through the pages of old tomes), is a more restrictive term for someone who loves to read. The appellation, intended to suggest that the love of reading is comparable to a gluttony to consume the writing, is distasteful in any language - rat de bibliothèque (French), bücherwurm (German), bogorm (Danish), tola'at sepharim (Hebrew) and best of all, lukutoukka (Finnish for the larva of a wood-boring beetle that feeds on the paper and glue in books).
A human bookworm might be entirely uninterested in the physical book itself and would be quite happy to read on a laptop or on his phone, or even to listen to a recording of someone else reading for him (which makes him guilty of two cardinal sins – gluttony and sloth). Not so the true bibliophile. He loves libraries and bookshops, and he loves everything about a book – to read it, certainly, but equally to hold it and admire its dust-jacket, its cover, the colour of the paper, the typeset, the cloth headband, the interior ornamentation... why, even the dust that settles along the upper edge of the pages and the smell the emanates from the ageing paper.
Of course, nobody really does judge a cover by its book, and I am saying this only to make a point. They might have done so, were the cover to be on the inside and the pages outside, but for some reason books are never made that way (tradition, I suppose), and so one gets to the cover before the text, and if judgement is made, as it inevitably is, it is made first of all of the book’s cover. That's why it is important to have a good one.
So, when someone says to you, 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' you will know that you are speaking to a bookworm, not a bibliophile. And, in these days of self-publishing, with the market flooded and close to four million books published each year, there are endless numbers of really terrible books, some of which have wonderful covers, and equally endless books with wonderful composition, but appalling covers.
All of this leads me to the reason for this post - to present a preview of two designs for the cover of my forthcoming First World War novel, A Gentle Empire, that is planned for launch (hopefully this time like one of the more successful SpaceX launches) in the coming May. Below is a peek reveal of two proposed covers by my talented cover designer (and son, Jonathan, who is a professional illustrator).
To give these a little bit of context, here is the cover blurb provided by my editors:
1914. When Percy Soul joins the Australian Imperial Force, he believes he’s about to embark on a grand adventure. War has broken out in Europe, and this is his chance to prove himself while fighting for a noble cause. His only concerns: looking after the reckless younger brother who’s enlisted with him, being separated from the woman he loves, and missing out on the action if the hostilities end too quickly.
Percy’s dreams of glory evaporate when he confronts the horrors of trench warfare. Members of his platoon meet gruesome ends. His brother is sent back into battle despite suffering from shell shock. As he becomes overwhelmed by rage and guilt over the comrades he can’t save, he struggles to hold on to his humanity.
A Gentle Empire is a gripping tale of innocence lost—and the bonds of brotherhood forged under unimaginable circumstances.
Let me know you thoughts on the cover designs.
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