This summer, my three- year-old daughter and I had an eight-hour layover in JFK airport. While soaking up JFK’s, ahem, delights, we spent an obscene amount of money on fresh fruit (a $4 apple still haunts me). We tested the patience of other passengers by singing showtunes at various gates. And we spent loads of time in the terminal’s numerous bookshops.
Going into a bookshop in the US – or in any other country – makes my heart beat a little faster. Everything is turned around. Books I haven’t heard of are on prominent display, titles I’ve been dying to get my mitts on are already out there, never before seen hardback editions call my name.
And – perhaps most significantly – I love the covers. The jackets. The look and feel of US editions are almost always different from the ones we see here. Usually, of course, because the book has a different publisher in the US. But also because it’s a different market. And that market has different expectations.
This summer, despite the time we had in bookshops, despite the absurd length of the layover, I didn't get to do my usual thing: read the first 10 pages of a book and make up my mind as to whether I should buy. I was under pressure. Three-year-old pressure. A three- year-old needed ice cream. And the bathroom. And a nap. And my full and undivided attention. (And so on.) And so, as she pulled me from the shelves to the till, I pulled the first book that grabbed me: A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan.
A week or two later I came across an article on Slate which talked about a trend in cover design this summer – "flat design" – and the truckload of summer titles that have adopted this approach. It involves bright colours, strong fonts, lots of white space. A Window Opens was mentioned. As was another book, Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple. A book I read and loved. The article got me thinking about cover design more generally.
I'm a writer and an avid reader. I read the TLS, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the Stinging Fly and the Dublin Review. I read the books pages in the papers religiously. I go to glossy magazines for their book coverage. I listen to book shows on the radio. And, sure, all of that coverage gets me thinking about books, remembering them. But what about the cover? Does it matter to me at all? Do I buy purely on reputation and author? Or is it possible that it's the cover that pushes me from thinking about a book to actually buying it?
I thought about why I picked up A Window Opens. I think I had read something about it on Twitter. I think I saw it on a list of top summer reads. I think I was taken in by the terrific quote from Liane Moriarty.
But do you know what I really think? I think I liked the cover. I liked the cover on its own terms – it looked fresh, bright and smart. I knew I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading it, I knew that I'd like to see it resting on my shelves when I was done. I think I bought it because the cover reminded me of Where'd You Go Bernadette, and I guess I thought the designer was trying to tell me something. They were trying to remind me of that terrific book. They were trying to tell me that this was a novel that was sharp and funny and current. The publisher told me all of that through a seemingly simple design. I'm glad I believed them.
I loved the novel. From cover to cover.
Sarah Bannan is the author of Weightless (Bloomsbury Circus)
