Paper chase

12.12.11 | Tom Tivnan

Since Julian Barnes big-upped Random House creative director Suzanne Dean in his Man Booker speech, a welter of stories on jacket design have popped up in the Sunday supplements. The articles have roughly followed Barnes' line that: "if the physical book is to resist the challenge of e-books, it has to look like something worth buying".

This, quite frankly, is something of a hoary old media angle, dredging up an "e" versus "p" conflict which most trade publishers resolved about three years ago (academic publishers about 15 years ago). Besides, "cover" design is just as, and arguably more, crucial for the digital book.   

That said, as a book design geek and print lover, I do agree with Barnes: to appeal to consumers the physical book must be made to be a desirable object. And there are some amazing British designers and art directors out there in addition to Dean, including Jonathan Gray, Faber's Donna Payne, Hodder's James Spackman and Penguin's Coralie Bickford-Smith to name but a handful. British book design is going through a creative purple patch.    

Yet the look of the physical book is not enough—it has to feel desirable. And here is where British publishers are letting themselves and their customers down.   

This was driven home to me when I was in the US recently and happened to go into the local Barnes & Noble. I was surprised but pleased to see a stack of Peter Ackroyd's excellent London Under (US: Nan A Talese/ UK: Chatto) on a front of shop table.

Anyway, what truly surprised was London Under's heft when I picked it up. The US and British books are in the same smallish Octavo-type hardback format (though the British edition is slightly longer), but the US edition weighs more, it feels more solid and meatier, a more desirable product, and this is because the paper quality is so much better. The Talese version is printed on heavy, alkaline (acid-free) paper with ridged endpaper (a sort of affectation, but effective one, of many a US publisher to make books seem more ‘ye olde'). The Chatto book (printed on Forest Steward Council certified paper) has thinner, more porous stock and, quite frankly, feels just plain cheaper than its American cousin; its pages, as I look at it now just six months after publication, are already yellowing.    

This is not to single out Chatto (well I have, but London Under is the only book with US/UK editions I have handy), for most British trade publishers use paper stock that would be considered sub-standard across the pond. There are, of course, significant cost reasons for this; US publishers are able to splurge more on production because of bigger print runs. But it doesn't have to be thus. Yes, there are specialists here like Everyman—part US owned by Knopf—who specialise in "beautiful" books. But some "regular" trade publishers do invest more in the production process, such as Alma Books.  

Publishers often argue that retailer discounting "devalues" the book, which is something of a philosophical discussion. But arguing that Amazon is cheapening books by its cut-rate prices is a difficult position to take when publishers themselves are actually physically devaluing the book.

Not every book, of course, is designed to last. Cheap and disposable genre fiction is not the Book of Kells. But it is instructive to see how far production values have fallen if you go into a second hand bookshop and pick up a "cheap and disposable" Penguin paperback from 60 years ago. It will more likely be in better nick than a Penguin paperback from six years ago.    

Publishers like to shout about their FSC credentials with the FSC logo prominent on the books. This is quite right. Protecting forests and biodiversity is in the industry's and the world's best interests. But I propose there should be a movement of publishers who shout about the acid-free, good quality paper stock in their books. A logo that says "Built to Last", which immediately tells print customers that the book they are picking up is a keeper: a desirable, beautiful object that will be on their shelves, and in good condition, decades after their first generation Kindle is an out of date, technologically redundant pile of plastic.     
 

• blog
• design
• Home
• tom tivnan