Tuesday 3 August 2010

Automatic Covers

Sharp-eyed reader Peter Hirtle pointed me towards something I'd never noticed before: Google automatically generating covers for their ebooks from the books' internal illustrations. It now seems to be done without any human intervention. And I have to admit, it doesn't produce bad results.



I spent quite some time looking for a book where the process had gone awry, but the closest I could find was this, where both the cover is mildly inappropriate and the author askew. But it's hardly Tutis-level incompetence.



As Peter points out, it seems odd to give specific editions of a book covers they never had, but it does help a little in navigating Google Books' appallingly organised catalogue, where books are frequently assigned completely random publication dates, where long out-of-copyright texts are unavailable to view, and where scans are sometimes unreadable and text transcriptions demented. Google Books is an almost wonderful resource. It's a bit like having the world's biggest, most extensive library, and then handing reshelving over to a troop of proboscis monkeys. The book you want is almost certainly in there somewhere, but finding it is another matter.

I did also stumble across a weird new Google Books innovation: 3D ebooks.


Somehow, I don't think the way to replicate the physical book reading experience with e-readers is to saddle everyone with 1950s red/green glasses that make your brain hurt.

15 comments:

Levi Stahl said...

The illustration for Lord Jim seems exactly right!

JRSM said...

It does! Although, puzzlingly, I downloaded that version from GB, and it has no illustrations, so I'm not even sure which edition it was taken from.

August said...

All this talk about Google Books, why does nobody ever mention the Internet Archive? The quality of our work is superior, and we actually do all those pesky things Google doesn't (like determine the copyright status of every book, and scan only those in the public domain or which the copyright holder has given us permission to scan).

On top of that, we've been doing it for just as long as they have. Perhaps even longer.

JRSM said...

August: You're right, the IA is fantastic! In my defence, I have posted about it a couple of times in the past: see http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2009/01/mental-world-of-preminger-archive.html and http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2008/10/swahili-alice.html

Amy L. Campbell said...

This is an amazing blog, I love that someone has an entire blog devoted to book covers. I was wondering if you had seen the new-ish Penguin Classics, particularly A Scarlet Letter? I wrote about it in my own blog and it has other relevant links: http://librarianslifeinbooks.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-76-something-else.html.

There's also a book called Brave Girl Eating coming out that mimics the Twilight cover, would love to hear your thoughts on that one too.

Pervaiz said...

That is amazing.
http://wofgtg.blogspot.com/

JRSM said...

Hey, Amy: Thank you for that. You'll be "pleased" to know that Ruben Toledo, who did that 'Scarlet Letter' cover, is now doing three more for Penguin Classics: 'Dracula', 'Jane Eyre' and 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. I haven't seen them yet, so I'm not sure if they'll improve on the first three.

That 'Brave Girl Eating' cover also reminds me of these (somewhat ruder) covers: http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2007/10/eve-apple-temptation.html

Daria Hlazatova said...

amazing book covers! a pleasure to look at! i especially loved the Call of the Wild.

Steerforth said...

it certainly puts Tutis in a new light.

Plamen said...

Nice work. Keep posting. I will visit your site often.

RSA Certificate said...

3D ebooks? Can't we all just start reading normal books again?
Google Books is pretty awesome though :) I'll check out the Internet Archive, it sounds pretty good so far.

bayan ayakkabi modelleri said...

like a very nice blog

jessmess said...

hahaha, 3D text is ridiculous and so bad for your eyesight...

Anonymous said...

I came across this one the other day - Medical News from 1898 - kind of a cover fail, I would say: http://books.google.com/books?id=sz0TAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

JRSM said...

Oh dear, that's no good at all.