The Wall Street Journal observed over the weekend an increasing trend of the use of ‘yellow’ in book covers as a design device to make a title jump out on a web page. Today more than 50% of all books are sold at Amazon, that means a great looking book cover that works on a book shelf, probably won’t in a line of thumbnails displayed on a computer screen or mobile device.
We identified that trend years ago when we were launching My Year as a Clown at Against the Grain Press, the yellow in our cover was deliberate. It was obvious that you had to do things differently to catch the eye in that sea of thumbnails because the same thing happened back in the early 90’s when the album shrunk down into a CD. Art work, liner notes, photographs, it all had to be reengineered for the new canvas, but it took bands years to figure that out.
And here we are in the age of Spotify, nostalgic for a CD, with liner notes legible only with a magnifying glass, even for people with 20/20 vision. The book industry is just figuring this stuff out now, jeez. Movies are headed in the same direction. Why would anyone buy a DVD these days? They do. But not for long.
BTW: My Year as a Clown hit #1 on three Amazon charts and broke the Top 30 All Kindle Chart.