How Are Book Covers and Their Components Represented in the Digital Market?

This article discusses the way in which the book cover and its elements are represented in and translated into the digital market. It opens up the space for discussion about which components of the print cover design translate successfully and are most applicable to the digital market. In particular, it considers how metadata is used alongside the cover image within the digital selling space. This is achieved through two in-depth interviews conducted with currently active cover designers who experienced the digitisation of the book industry first-hand. It is also achieved through a detailed case study of the unique company Blind Date with a Book, and their use of metadata clues instead of a book cover. The article concludes that the book “cover” in the digital market is a deconstructed version of its physical counterpart. It is formed of a cover image and various elements of metadata, released from the boundaries and limits of the physical print book. Instead, the digital cover exists in the online selling space – the webpage