You can tell how stagnant things have become from the lookalike covers. I walk into a bookstore and every title I see is like this.
They must have fired the design team and replaced it with a lazy bot. You get big fonts, random shapes, and garish colors—again and again and again. Every cover looks like it was made with a circus clown’s makeup kit.
My wife is in a book club. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they read the same book every month. It’s those same goofy colors and shapes on every one.
Of course, you can’t judge a book by its cover. But if you read enough new releases, you get the same sense of familiarity from the stories. The publishers keep returning to proven formulas—which they keep flogging long after they’ve stopped working.
And that was a long time ago.
It’s not just publishing. A similar stagnancy has settled in at the big movie studios and record labels. Nobody wants to take a risk—but (as I’ve learned through painful personal experience) that’s often the riskiest move of them all. Live by the formula, and you die by the formula.
It’s not just publishing. A similar stagnancy has settled in at the big movie studios and record labels. Nobody wants to take a risk—but (as I’ve learned through painful personal experience) that’s often the riskiest move of them all. Live by the formula, and you die by the formula.
How did we end up here?
It’s hard to pick a day when the publishing industry made its deal with the devil. But an anecdote recently shared by Steve Wasserman is as good a place to begin as any.
by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. I'll never buy a book that looks like this, no matter what the reviews say. I'd be embarrassed to be seen in public, or have it on my bookshelf. See also: Fifty People Control the Culture (HB).]
