Some book jackets are things of beauty. Others look like they were cooked up on a junior publicist's lunch break, and it's hard not to think the book would probably be better with no jacket at all. Authors often have little or no input or say into how the work you have (one hopes) loved and labored over ends up presenting itself to the world. Sometimes, you don't even get to see the jacket design until the publisher delivers your box of author copies.
Three hardcover books this fall are eschewing the dust jacket altogether: "cover art is not printed on dust jackets but instead stamped directly onto the boards that hug their pages," per this article in the New York Observer.
This seems like an obvious idea that was a long time coming, although I could swear I've already seen hardback books using this approach. Possibly art books?
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