Book Covers- Carly

While the story is the most important part of a book, no one will know how great the story it is if no one wants to pick up the book and read it. In the Ted Talk, the book cover that stood out to me the most was the cover for the book "Dry." The cover gives a little hint about what the tumultuous journey of recovery looked like for Augusten Burroughs, all through just changing the typography of the one-word title. 

 I think I have always been a person who looks at the book cover, or its spine on a shelf, before I read the title. So it was interesting to hear from the people who design the covers how they make me do that. Chip Kidd mentions how the people who make the covers are also translators. He explained how he should first understand the story, and not make the cover too obvious as to not insult the reader. This aligns well with the advice from other translators about what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to translating. I actually looked up some famous book covers, and I found covers that explicitly say what the story will be about tend to only be children's books, so I guess that checks out. 

Through the Ted Talk, I saw how there were many unconventional ways to get the reader to understand what the book is trying to say without explaining every detail. Being creative and exploring ways to express different eras or even parallel planes can be the difference between someone wanting to read a book or not.  I think the cover of a book does play a big part into whether people will buy the physical version of the book. As a person who mostly has physical books, I can say that only my books with the best covers are on display. Even though E-Books are popular these days, I think the art of translating visually keeps people coming back to the paperback book.