If I Were A Speaker In The Future Of The Book Conference ...

Jaucian said it's for the Philippine Star's supplement for this week's Bookfair. Watch out for that, then?

1) How important are book designs and covers these days? I've noticed that big publishing houses like Penguin, Vintage and Gollancz have been releasing books with impressive book covers.

Covers are the main point of entry for potential readers if not the only marketing tool the publishers use to sell their books, and like with the three publishers you mentioned in your question - Penguin, Vintage, and Victor Gollancz - they can also be used to establish an aesthetic identity, either for the publisher - regular Penguin books have a thoroughly distinct look different from everyone else; Vintage has more of a common vibe with all their books and less of a common aesthetic look, but this common vibe (image-driven minimalist, simple title type) is strong enough that when you see a Vintage book from afar, even when they don't look that different from all the other books, you still just know it's a Vintage book; arguably, the same can be said about VG books, although they have a weaker aesthetic overall - or for the books themselves - Penguin's many many many book series(es), like the Penguin Tattoos, Penguin Great Ideas, Penguin Classics, Penguin Classics That Have Alternative Comic Book Artists As Cover Artists On Them, etc etc - already effectively announcing just what their books are about, just what they're all about as a publisher. So yeah, aside from the obvious "it has to look beautiful so people will buy it," covers are also for establishing identity.

Book design, though, as in holistic book design, interior book design, is an art that is a lot more subtle, a little more invisible than cover design although I'd argue that it's loads more important as an element of the book - with covers, you only get to see them for at most five seconds or so in the whole two or three hours an average reader might devote to actual book reading, and when you're not reading the book, they're mainly on the shelves with only their spines showing - as with interior book design, specifically page design, there are so many things that are meant to happen altogether and with such precision that if only one is out of synch, tragedy ensues: if the typeface is too large, it can be seen as made for either kids or fogeys, and can be intellectually off-putting for some readers; if the typeface is too tiny or if the kerning and leads between types are too wide or too narrow, they'd cause headaches; if the size of the type for the page numbers is too big, it'd be distracting the reader's eyes from the main text body; if you use a sans serif typeface for the main text body, it'll be a bit more difficult to read and follow than when you use a serif type; but if you use a sans serif type for the chapter titles and such, it'll be a far more pleasant read than when you use a serif type; not to mention the widows and orphans and hyphens and em dashes and italics and text that begin on the verso pages, etc etc etc - all of these things are so precise that when done right they're invisible, but when done wrong they're irritating.

These things have been steady constants throughout the history of printing, and for the most part, they're all still relevant in the age of digital books, only some I feel will be eventually abandoned as the eBook readers and iPads and other digital reading devices manage to establish a more secure foothold as mainstream media - I'm already seeing this change with the guidelines I was given when I was asked to design covers for eBooks: because the market for eBooks is online, the demand to make the covers pop-out has gone up in the sense that you can't really play around much with type because of the need to make the cover instantly legible and noticeable when seen in your monitor as an 8.33%-thumbnail amidst all the other 8.33%-thumbnails; also, the need for the back cover is gone, as well as the need for blurbs or synopses, or even the spine. As for the interior book design, a lot of eBook readers have customisable settings with regards to font size and page orientation and paragraph flow that it renders the page as artifact moot - even page numbers are irrelevant! And one can even set up a book as a set of hyperlinks instead of the far simpler page-to-pixel transfer, demanding from the reader - and the book - a far more different reading experience compared to the conventional linear experience.

But there are still publishers who'd rather concentrate on doing print than doing digital, and for some cases it's vice versa, but for more and more publishers, addressing both concerns is starting to look like a good publishing model. So, in short, it's both all changing and all staying the same, for the betterment of everything.

Eh, book design here in the Philippines is mainly lazy and uninspired - flip through any Filipiniana bookshelf in any bookstore and you'll see a parade of absolute obnoxious dreck half-assedly assembled in Photoshop - owing to the fact that most book publishers mainly come from either the textbook industry or the newspaper - often tabloid - industry, both industries not really known for their high-end design output.

Most publishers are also managed by people who are mainly businessmen - which is understandable as it is a business - who only have eyes for the bottomline and not for design - and often design is dictated by beauty, and beauty isn't always wise for business, thus design is always left on the level of perfunctory, often just a case of laying everything out in Times New Roman in a typo-filled rush to get the book printed, as the sooner it's printed the sooner it'll be sold.

But there's hope in the form of the independent press, in the form of publishers who are thinking more of the presentation as a way of selling, the beauty as marketing tool, the book as artifact to be appreciated not only as a vehicle of text ideas but also as a work of art, be they in print or in web. I first noticed this with High Chair's poetry books and their webjournal, and also with Heights at least ever since the mid 90s, and now with customizable blogs and Twitter pages and Deviantart portfolios, it's all converging into one big messy colourfully flavourful salad. There are smarter people making decisions nowadays, people who grew up on animes and mangas and rock posters and comic books and ukay-ukays and dress-up dolls and TV ads and music videos and Playstations and iPads - everyday, people are getting exposed to more and more examples of great design often as soon as one can point at a button and press and stare and say "dog" as Blues Clues runs around the vivid verdant fields of virtuality, and these kids will grow up on Photoshop and InDesign and Manga Studio EX 4 and talking like prodigy rocket scientists in Facebook and maybe they'll end up working for mainstream markets but they'll be making their own things, too, all smart and beautiful things. Like I said, it's all already happening today, and when you think about it, it's all just still planting seeds. I live for the day when we get to reap these things by the bushels.