Fetishable Books

The Book Cover Archive

I could, and have, spent hours looking through this collection. Like many amazing things, it comes from the casual optimist.  from the interview I excerpted earlier: an exchange that I thought was actually very insightful and changed my mind about e-books:

E-book detractors have of a strange idea of what most books are. Those beautiful dusty old encyclopedias, that rare first-edition of Ulysses, even your fancy new Vintage paperback? That is not most books. The Grisham and Grafton paperbacks at the airport, Chicken Soup for the Spirit, college textbooks — that’s most books. Does anyone really care if the next Janet Evanovich thriller has no corporeal form? Wouldn’t that be an improvement?

…

As the market of crappy, badly designed books diminishes, the demand for beautifully crafted, fetishable books grows (sparking an unexpected return of the Independent Bookstore). There will ultimately be fewer books “in print,” but more awesome, well-designed books than ever.

I think it’s a good point, and an vaguely optimistic outlook I can actually believe might happen. Please go read the whole thing. [Really, I just like the term 'fetishable books' and the images it inspires.]

When our economy has drifted to a point of such abstraction that we’re regularly trading imaginary money for intangible goods (see: Facebook gift economy, ebooks, et cetera), corporeality definitely has its allure.  I already treat the books I own as art.  I just dread the day when publishers will price them accordingly (i.e. $50 for the ability to claim ownership of the tangible object, versus the significantly cheaper – and pedestrian – digital version).