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.