Marginal decisions to increase the net of revenue minus costs arise in non-profit organizations as much as in companies. The designers of a recent book, Peter Leeson‘s The Invisible Hook (Princeton University Press, 2009), recognized this in picking a cover. The dust jacket features a wooden background (a plank?), onto which a transparent hook has been laminated – thus a semi-visible hook! Pretty cute, but the lamination adds to total variable cost. So why do it? Presumably the Press believes that this design will make the book stand out from others and sell more copies. Total revenue will rise, perhaps by more than the increase in variable cost. If so, this was a wise business decision; if not, at least it’s an innovation that will help make the Press more visible in the publishing world.
The Economics of Book Covers
TAGS: business
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I wonder what the opportunity cost of writing this blog post was? Is boring economics the new freakonomics? What is freaky about forcing Gary Becker’s economic approach to human behavior onto every phenomenon you can possibly think of?
If the quality of posts in this blog starts gravitating to the standard of the above piece, there is no point in continuing to read it.
@ # 5 above:
One of the first authors who had a book with covers that experimented with marketing effectiveness was Future Shock by Alvin Toffler–at least in mass-market paperback.. The book came out in a number of colors and supposedly, the color choices of the public was taken into consideration for other titles and other efforts.
Ann T.
Nate, I think Cory Doctorow’s “With a Little Help” anthology has been selling online with several different covers. I’m not sure about the varying success of them though. Might want to check out craphound.com
Laminated? Or embossed?
@7 David, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.” was Frank Sinatra.
@kaspar (#9)
Commenting for the first time here, just to say that I completely agree with you.
“Presumably the Press believes that this design will make the book stand out from others and sell more copies. Total revenue will rise, perhaps by more than the increase in variable cost. If so, this was a wise business decision; if not, at least it’s an innovation that will help make the Press more visible in the publishing world.”
Yes, one must be a professor of economics to make such an insightful observation.
This post may have been interesting if the author showed just how much book covers actually matter using data, but without that… I second kaspar’s last sentence.
By far the worst entry on this blog. I’ve come to expect a bit more from you guys. Everyone reading this already understands the concepts discussed here – such a waste of time.
Sales and Marketing departments can destroy companies by “freshening up the book cover”, too.
In the days when engineering catalogs were on long shelves and telephones and Rolodexes were the tools of the trade, I could always grab the “Company-X” catalog from a stack by its distinctive blue and white cover.
After a decade of these (their parts were almost never-changing), some bright person had the idea to change it to dark brown with a hard-to-read spine.
I tossed out the old catalog…but could never seem to find the new one in the stacks of other books and catalogs.
And you can bet Company-X blamed the reduction in sales on the Asians, the reduction in military spending, competition, the economy or whatever–instead of their own bone-headed catalog artwork.