Are Book Covers Biased?

A post on Flavorwire caught my attention. It points to an essay in the New York Times by the author Meg Wolitzer entitled “The Second Shelf: On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women” that brings up an intriguing point about the design of book jackets.
Wolitzer notes that the covers of book written by women convey sentimentality and domesticity that contributes to those books not being taken seriously as literature. Wolitzer writes: “Look at some of the jackets of novels by women. Laundry hanging on a line. A little girl in a field of wildflowers. A pair of shoes on a beach. An empty swing on the porch of an old yellow house.” These soft, gentle covers are design to appeal to women’s emotional interiors but also project a stereotype that relegates the book to Women’s Fiction, a section of the genre where few men dare to venture. The books Wolitzer is talking about are not romance novels or “chick Lit” but serious fiction that deserves to be read by men and women alike.
Wolitzer describes how books written by men tend to be designed using bold, masculine type. “I don’t need to remember anything about signifiers to understand that just like the jumbo, block-lettered masculine typeface, feminine cover illustrations are code,” she notes. “These covers might as well have a hex sign slapped on them, along with the words: ‘Stay away, men! Go read Cormac McCarthy instead!'”
In looking at some book covers by men and women, I see Wolitzer’s point of strong masculine fonts versus what may be viewed as feminine type. A great deal of the jackets of books written by men that are considered serious literature use sans serif fonts. Books written by women tend to use serif type with delicate ascenders. Whereas most women’ book covers use script faces or italic fonts at least once, men’s employ sturdy handwriting as if the writer is too busy, important, or both, to sit down and practice careful penmanship.
Here are some examples that I found on Amazon that are mentioned by Wolitzer in her essay):




Wolitzer’s essay takes on bigger issues about gender and stereotypes, but what struck me about it is the subtle — or maybe not so subtle — messages design conveys. We communicate through design and lead the reader or customer down a path toward a conclusion. Of course these are generalizations and there are exceptions. But it really started me thinking about the art of book-jacket design. It’s hard to tell the content of an entire book in a single image that captivates customers and compels them to buy. It would be nice if that single image appealed to both sexes.

David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción are the co-hosts of InDesignSecrets.com, publishers of InDesign Magazine, and producers of The InDesign Conference.
  • Anonymous says:

    And why you would limit your sales this way? Except that the publishing industry is very focused on knowing what the market or target audience is for everything. And then they design exactly to that market.

  • Leah Hanlin says:

    Nice balance and attention to detail! Definitely inspiration for the rest of us!

  • Anonymous says:

    I think there are many more levels to this than the author’s gender alone. The designer’s gender is just as prominent.
    But society is what it is because we are comfortable with it being this way. Our genders are different and I for one don’t see anyone in the country being forced into the stereotype. If someone disagrees they aren’t put in jail because of it.

  • Anonymous says:

    So one might unconsciously judge a book by its cover?

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