"Getting to design your own book cover is the sort of ultimately maddening power that probably shouldn’t be entrusted to vain mortals," wrote essayist Tim Kreider in the New Yorker a few years ago. "It’s a little like getting to choose your own face." The academics I know have actually tended not to obsess over cover design, in the same way that they tend not to obsess about their daily wardrobe choices. By the time many of us turn to these decisions, we feel like we're up against a deadline and are just anxious to move along. Or we would just rather spend our time on research and writing, tasks that feel more substantial.
I have no real quarrel with that approach. An uninspired cover has never stopped me from reading and appreciating an academic book. But a good cover is such a delight. Done well, a cover helps the reader get in the right mindset, by evoking place, time period, and mood. The covers I most admire are also clever. They visually distill the argument, helping the reader remember the author's main points long after the book has been re-shelved. In other words, cover design isn't, or doesn't have to be, a vanity project. It can be a service to the reader. And even when the ultimate product doesn't quite work (the jury is out on mine), I think that striving to make it work can the author better identify what the book is really about and what readers ought to take away.
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