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Over at Under the Covers, Lisa Chellman takes a look at a rarely discussed aspect of book design: the spine. She makes an excellent point that publishers would do well to heed: In libraries and bookstores, where face-out shelving is at a premium, readers’ first impression of a book isn’t the cover. It’s the spine.

Galleycat links to a Slate piece (“Everyone Will Be Lonely Eight Months from Now,” by Seth Stevenson), whose exploration of “the weird science of stock photography” mentions a different kind of book-jacket trend: the ubiquity of Jennifer Anderson. Of course, it is possible for an image to become too popular. A few years ago, a model/actress living [...]

For the editor of Reference Books Bulletin, and in fact for anyone involved in any way with reference publishing, an ALA conference can be a sobering experience.  The recent ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim was no exception.  On Friday evening, I attended the Books for Youth Forum and got a face full of  fun (excited audience, upbeat [...]

In New York (“A Warming Trend“), Christopher Bonanos noticed a sweet new book-jacket trend:                         I love this stuff, although I usually find out about it second-hand: most of the books that I review have plain paper covers. Seen a good trend lately? Let [...]

How this book cover: . . . . turned into this one:   From Publishers Weekly (“Little, Brown’s After the Fire Jacket, Before and After,” by Lynn Andriani): Editor Geoff Shandler explained: “We had a good response to the type jacket, but there was thought that was it too abstract in some way. When the [...]

Just read a terrific essay by Luc Sante about his personal library (“The Book Collection That Devoured My Life,” the Wall Street Journal): I’m not a snob about books, but I’m probably a show-off — as who isn’t? My showing-off is of a pretty low-key if not completely abstruse sort, though. No one has ever [...]

For those of you interested in judging books by their front covers, PRINT Magazine chronicles a trend with legs (“One Leg Leads to Another,” by Steven Heller). (Thanks, Dan!)

Frankly, I think boys and girls now have too many options for everything: danger, mischief, and…um, stuff.  

More timely old stuff: lifehacker’s 13 Book Hacks for the Library Crowd. Most of us spend a lot of time in the virtual world these days, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a good book every now and then. From your local library to the classroom to the bookstore, there are a lot of tools [...]

This has been stuck in my in-box for a staggeringly long time, but these books are timeless, so I forgive myself. The Rare Book Room offers, well, here: The “Rare Book Room” site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the [...]