On Telling/Selling a Book by Its Cover

Abstract

in themselves do not narrate. Photographs preserve instant (Berger 1980:55). But of course, those appearances are selectively preserved, just as photographs are used and interpreted selectively. This essay considers one particular use of photographs-on book covers. There, as elsewhere, a picture is worth a thousand words. But who produces them, whom do they address, what do they say, and what discursive form do these words take? Different readings, conventions of representation, and institutional settings intersect in a book cover; a cover is a marketing device, an aesthetic production, and a representation that may relate to a book's content. What picture can help sell a thousand books?

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