(2012-05-15) Mod Hack Book Cover

Craig Mod on hacking the Book Cover (EBook). So how do you combat this lack of control? You design for total flexibility.

• Seth Godin Poke The Box - icon-like image, no text
• A Book Apart books - big simple text, no image
• Kindle-first design: if your cover looks great on the Kindle, it'll probably also look great in print.

My thoughts before reading him...

• An EBook needs multiple covers - probably need some visual consistency even if not identical...
  • something that looks good, evokes the appropriate mood, when postage-stamp-sized in a web-store. (Title doesn't need to be legible.)
  • medium version for single-book "catalog page"
  • Splash Page for the Book Server (this can follow very different rules, including being dynamic in some way)
  • full-screen Tablet cover page
    • this will also get used on the Home Server Screen Saver

Him noting how the Kindle reader skips right past the cover when you start a book makes me newly-angry about the UI/design experimentation cut off by proprietary client-app Monopoly: Amazon, ITunes, Twitter...

• it also means you need to make sure your Cover is an entry in your Table Of Contents!