Melville House Books

What, exactly, is the point of a dustjacket, asks Peter Robins in this Guardian story. “The clue can’t be in the name: on the shelf, the most dust-prone part of a book is the top, which a jacket doesn’t cover … the jacket remains an unnecessary and vulnerable encumbrance.” And now, he says, “some in the book trade appear to be reaching the same conclusion.”

He notes the rise of what’s known in the US as “paper over board” books, and in the UK as “casewrapped”: “Jacketless hardbacks with cover art printed on them …. It was the style for set texts to be handed down across generations of schoolchildren, and workshop manuals to be kept within reach of greasy fingers,” but that now “seems to be becoming an increasingly popular option for literary fiction.”

Some examples: Toby Barlow‘s Sharp Teeth, Andrea Levy‘s The Long Song, and Zadie Smith‘s Changing My Mind. Meanwhile another critic tells him

… she reckoned it was part of a wider race among publishers for “distinctive and different ways to publish all their titles to increase their ‘shelf appeal’, as there is so much competition for space and attention in the bookshops”. An emphasis on the printed book as an object – “a beautiful and special and distinctive object” – could also help it keep “a separate market in the age of the ebook”.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.