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DONNA TARTT THE SECRET HISTORY Penguin, 8.99 £, paperback, 9780140167771 With The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt making such a splash, it's no surprise that retailers are stocking up on the [...]

S E CRAYTHORNE HOW YOU SEE ME Myriad Editions, 9781908434562, 8.99 [pounds sterling] With book design it is almost always about the front cover, forever desperate to get your attention. [...]

LEE CHILD MAKE ME Transworld, 20 [pounds sterling], 9780893073889 It is easy to underestimate the quality of these covers. Yes, the publishers still chum out the cliched 'shadow man' with [...]

CHARLES SAATCHI DEAD: A CELEBRATION OF MORTALITY Booth-Clibborn, 18th June, 16.99 £, 9781861543592 Every now and again a cover comes along that doesn't just allude to the content of the [...]

OWEN JONES THE ESTABLISHMENT Allen Lane, 16.99 £, 9781846147197 Think about it ... an author uses lots of words to communicate a series of complex and multi-layered concepts. A cover [...]

BLANCHE VAUGHAN EGG W&N, 22 £, 9780297871606 This is a book you just want to pick up. It is a thumbnail that you can't help but be drawn to. Utterly [...]

HARRIET LANE HER Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 978029 7865056, 12.99 [pounds sterling] There are four things that make this jacket interesting: the incredibly cold colour palette gives the book a hardness [...]

DAVID NICHOLLS US Hodder, 20 £, 9780340896990 Should the publisher of David Nicholls' Us echo the bold approach used for One Day in order to jog the memories of the [...]

HARUKI MURAKAMI COLORLESS TSUKURU ... Harvill Seeker, 20 £, 9781846558337 The very first Google homepage ... the Citroen DS ... the first apple store. every now and again a piece [...]

PAULO SCOTT NOWHERE PEOPLE Arid Other Stories, 10 [pounds sterling], 9781908276384 TOM RACHMAN THE RISE AND FALL OF GREAT POWERS Sceptre, 14.99 [pounds sterling], 9781444752342, You wait ages for a [...]

SALLY GREEN HALF BAD Penguin, 9780141354309/0868 14.99 £/7.99 £ It feels like this cover belongs to a breakout book, so it comes as no surprise that it's exactly what it [...]

JODI PICOULT THE STORYTELLER Hodder, 9781444766677, 6.99 £ It's hard to make a book stand out at the mass-market end of women's fiction. This cover does a very good job. [...]

LIANE MORIARTY THE HUSBAND'S SECRET Penguin, 7.99 £, 9781405911665 Google Image search 'Butterfly in a Jar Book Cover': you'll get at least seven different covers featuring this image. It should [...]

HANNAH KENT BURIAL RITES Picador, out now, 9781447233176 'Less is More' is a classic design mantra: for years it has been used in a minimalist way to help books stand [...]

The publisher will have felt a bit of pressure when working on The Interestings, having to deliver the sense of distinctiveness that the title promises. It turns out that their [...]

This is a cover that stops you in your tracks. It's so clean, well-crafted and arresting that you just can't help but look at it. It brings James Bond right [...]

The world of 'coffee table cookbooks' is filled with elegant design and high production values. Last year it was Polpo that raised the bar and this year we think it [...]

The cover for Close my Eyes is very simple and yet very distinctive. In a genre as crowded crime thrillers, that is one hell of an achievement. Of course the [...]

This is a very interesting cover because of the way it plays with the rules of a category. Fifty Shades of Grey defined a genre and when everyone else jumped [...]

This is just a proof ... but so much clever thinking has gone into its presentation that we really hope this approach will make its way through to the final [...]

The great thing about designing covers for non-fiction titles is that so many of them have very precise and distinctive propositions. In this particular regard, GULP: Adventures on the Alimentary [...]

There will have been a lot of attention paid to the cover of Donna Tartt's latest, and it shows. It is fresh, confident and memorable. Given the title, plot and [...]

We like the cover of Expecting because it depicts pregnancy without cliched images of big bumps cradled by a hand. More importantly, even though it is over eight years old, [...]

By eschewing the conventional design grid of title, author and image, the publisher of First Novel (Cape) has created something truly distinctive with this cover. The design demands closer attention [...]

The cover for Margaret Forster's The Unknown Bridesmaid (Chatto) is a classic attempt to play by the rules of the genre in order to maximise consumer appeal. Unfortunately, in trying [...]

Publishers have long been guilty of attaching far too much value to their imprints--a value that, with a few exceptions, is rarely shared by readers. But Mimi by Lucy Ellman [...]

Every now and again a novel comes along that gets the publisher very excited. For once publicists believe each other when they claim that 'this book could be huge'. In [...]

At www.fixabook.com we examine the strategy behind book cover design. This week we turn our attention to Penelope: the debut novel by Rebecca Harrington (Virago). We like this cover. At [...]

Bloody social media. It's everywhere. What started out as a fun way of keeping in touch with friends is now completely re-inventing the way businesses work. The reason is pretty [...]

A RECENT survey of students studying Publishing at postgraduate level revealed an astonishing swing in ambitions. For years, the majority have wanted to become editors; now it seems that the [...]

The retail world is reeling from the double whammy of a. global crisis and a simultaneous lurch towards e-commerce across all sectors. The new buzzwords in retail strategy are 'Omnichannel', [...]

Kindles, Kobos, OYOs, iPads, Nooks ... the arms race is now well underway. The logic is that consumers are more likely to buy e-books from a retailer which has also [...]

As the recession starts to enter its worst phase (yes, I'm afraid so) more and more publishers will end up chasing the same small pool of authors. This is going [...]

In the past, you could sit on a train, and make an assessment of the character of your fellow passengers--solely by looking at the book covers around you. The same [...]

Whichever side of the book industry you come from, it is critical to invest real time in assessing how power and influence might change within the book retail sector over [...]

The film 'The Social Network' is a banker for the Oscar shortlists, but it may also have a significant impact on the media/marketing landscape. What the movie has done is [...]

Years ago I worked on a famous campaign for Lunn Poly travel agents. (Maybe some older readers remember them--they were the people who sold holidays before the internet completely destroyed [...]

For years, commentators have talked excitedly about, how 'going digital' will revolutionise the way we engage with books. And now, all over the web we see examples of design studios [...]

The book industry is very good at nurturing and rewarding the creators of ideas, but is less adept, at developing Champions. This is despite the fact that Champions are vital [...]

World Book Night. What a great idea. Intrinsically linked to World Book Day but clearly a different concept and obviously adult in nature. This could be a significant new initiative [...]

For most people on the retailing side of the book industry, e-books pose the greatest technological threat of the near future. In fact, by now most are fed of being [...]

Is the internet killing non-fiction books? Think about it, most of the information that most people want to know about a subject can be found online. More than that, it [...]

The recent campaign for the opening of Ikea in Malmo saw the store manager using his Facebook site to give away Ikea stuff via pics of room sets from inside [...]

Marketing budgets are being slashed. Literary editors are being fired. Independent bookshops are in decline. Shelf space is dominated by the bigger authors. Publishers feel they have fewer ways to [...]

For many bookshops, running a small cafe within the main business makes a lot of sense. It brings different consumers into the shop--some of whom can be converted into regular [...]

Hello. My name is Damian Horner and I'm a Bookaholic. In recent days I have also been labelled a 'moron', an 'amateur' and a 'waste of time'. It is a [...]

Twitter, blogs and online communities ... it is almost boring how much the world goes on about the importance of these mediums. What makes them special is their role in [...]

There has been general outcry about Asda offering a 77% discount on the latest Delia cookbook. Let's face it though, for Asda it makes good sense. The book has become [...]

The credit crunch is changing the way consumers spend their money and it may have significant implications for three-for-two book promotions. To understand why, we must look at the roots [...]

Marketing is a leap of faith at the best of times, which is why in a recession it is usually the area of spending that is cut first. Yet independent [...]