Vintage awesomeness — Hella Haase cover seen at the Vintage Paperbacks (Non-Penguin) Flickr Pool.
Make it Good — Jacket copy matters according to a Publishing Trends survey:
Flap copy is especially important for fiction. And title and cover impact are closely related to the impact of jacket copy. If the flap copy defies the expectation created by the cover and title—if, for instance, the cover of the book leads the reader to expect a thriller but the flap copy identifies it as horror—readers are less likely to buy it.
The Common Addiction to Mediocrity — Guy Kawasaki talks to Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design and professor at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna (lessons here for the book industry for sure):
Excellent products require more then just a good designer or a good design agency—they require humanistic and cultural vision, courage and discipline in execution.
Which leads quite nicely to Nora Young‘s podcast great conversation with filmmaker Gary Hustwit, director of Objectified and Helvetica, on CBC Radio’s Spark.
Thrift-Store Philosophy — some nice vintage book cover design finds at the always excellent Ward-O-Matic.
Instant Gratification — An interesting Q&A with Patrick Brown of Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena (PW‘s Bookseller of the Year in 2008) on The Big Bad Book Blog:
People greatly underestimate how important browsing is for physical purchases, largely, I think, because it’s lacking in the online world. People come to an ecommerce site already knowing what they want to buy (for the most part). This isn’t so in our store, where people frequently come in for one book and end up leaving with a book that caught their eye on the way to the section or waiting in line at the register. The other thing we provide that I think is invaluable is a physical place for literary culture to happen.
Well-Aimed Typewriter Keys — After 70 years, Little, Brown and Co. have unveiled a new logo designed by Lance Hidy.
The Book Depository — who have a great range of books and offer free shipping world wide (and have this great live map), has launched an affiliate program. Can I humbly request someone develop a wordpress widget for it please?
And lastly, The New Yorker‘s The Book Bench blog has a sneak preview of the new Dan Clowes book.