Sarah pointed out this book and said, “Amazing to me what awful covers business books have.”
They really do tend to be damn ugly…
Blech. A good first step toward business success: Realize design matters.
You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
Sarah pointed out this book and said, “Amazing to me what awful covers business books have.”
They really do tend to be damn ugly…
Blech. A good first step toward business success: Realize design matters.
Brian
on 03 Apr 09Check out The Book Cover Archive. There are thousands of great looking book covers there, all nicely categorized and easy to browse.
Pete Prestipino
on 03 Apr 09On the whole I completely agree, although there are many notable exceptions. The best I’ve seen recently is for “Brand Bubble” by John Gerzama – very cool – textured and everything.
Tim
on 03 Apr 09The old 37signals.com frontpage had always reminded me a lot of Covey’s 7 Habit’s book cover.
I always thought that was intentional, I guess not.
Fumin
on 03 Apr 09Judging books by their covers! That Offshore investment book cover is particularly ugly.
Tim
on 03 Apr 09@Brian
Definitely some “pretty” book covers at that link you provided BUT, I have absolutely no idea what those books are for.
Like Jason’s Fried argument – they are not effective.
That’s why The Drudge Report and likes are the best designed.
They might not be “pretty” but they quickly convey the topic.
Jamie Stephens
on 03 Apr 09Yeah, they’re ugly, no doubt. But maybe the business book designers know something we don’t about people who buy business books. Perhaps they have found that the “ugly” aesthetic is more effective. Of course, then I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that this kind of bad design is more effective or that there are that many designers who think this is good design.
Joe Fusco
on 03 Apr 09I’ve always felt this book broke the ugly business book cover mold:
A Simpler Way
But, then again, it’s not your typical business book.
Paul
on 03 Apr 09These books have sold many more copies than either of the 37 Signals-authored books. Maybe design isn’t as important as you think.
John
on 03 Apr 09Maybe the ugly covers are working – their intended audience sees them on the airport book racks where so many of them are bought?
Graham
on 03 Apr 09If I know anything about CEO types, its that they LOVE flashy/tacky stuff. They probably drool all over those covers before buying 5 copies each.
Dmitriy
on 03 Apr 09Since there are so many of them, it must mean they are selling well. Which brings up a question – what to do if commercial success (selling a book) is aligned (strongly correlated) with bad design (ugly cover)? What should be sacrificed?
Tim Windsor
on 03 Apr 09Let’s just call it the Powerpoint effect.
Tim
on 03 Apr 09For someone to buy a book in a book store or airport, first and foremost – you must get their attention.
So consider the following situation …
When you are in a book store or airport, what do you notice – something pretty, or something out-of-place / ugly.
People notice things that are out of place and ugly before noticing something pretty.
Tim
on 03 Apr 09People also spend a longer time looking at something “ugly” because it’s only natural to try and figure out why it’s ugly.
Elliot
on 03 Apr 09Is something badly designed simply because we don’t like it on a purely subjective level?
These book covers serve a purpose – to sell the ideas inside to a particular audience. It is possible that this style has come about by chance but unlikely.
That’s not to say that the staus quo is always right but that sometimes, what works is different to what we think SHOULD work.
The only way to know for sure is to tweak, test and repeat. This is easy on the web of course but not so easy when you’re printing, distrubuting and marketing thousands of books.
Elliot
Happy
on 03 Apr 09“A good first step toward business success…” Like Covey, Johnson, and the authors of some of Amazon’s other top 200 are wondering what their first step toward business success should be?
I like the observation about unattractive book covers. Yet why can’t it just be that? Why does everything recently in svn have to be: 1) set up a false problem (e.g. bad cover design doesn’t sell books; entrepreneurs plan to fail first; people want the simplicity of ‘Readability’ – no wait: I mean people want design in their papers, not text)... and then 2) position a solution to the false premise?
Tim
on 03 Apr 09@Happy
It stops becoming an observation when the title of this post is “Why are business book covers so ugly ?“
It was posted as a questioned, so people are replying with answers.
Chris Carter
on 03 Apr 09I would assume because one of the real secrets to success in business is that you don’t spend money when you don’t need to. Obviously, the material in these books (at least the ones I’ve read) suffices to get adequate book sales, they don’t want to spend the extra money or royalties to put a design on it.
“A good first step toward business success: Realize design matters.”
I would have left that off the end there, considering the books you posted. The real first, first step is: know your audience. Design may matter. Your audience are the ones forking over the cash for your ugly baby that is going to save their lives (I mean that facetiously, I don’t like a lot of these books).
Evan
on 03 Apr 09We can probably conclude that for this kind of book, cover design is orthogonal to sales.
I’m not sure Matt was implying that prettier covers would sell significantly more books, but it’d be revealing to know if that were true or not.
Anonymous Coward
on 03 Apr 09You’re obviously cherry picking – there are plenty of ugly book covers in every genre. And plenty of good ones. Much like all other areas of life – some good design, some great, lots not so great.
Andrew Warner
on 03 Apr 09I’d love to see a designer remake each of those covers the way 37 Signals remade FedEx’s web page.
Peter Cooper
on 03 Apr 09These covers are designed. Just because you don’t agree with their aesthetic doesn’t mean they weren’t designed with a purpose (namely to get bought and read).
I’m not too enamored with the covers presented above, but they certainly rank above the common vapid, vague over-designed alternatives (particularly popular in the late 90s). There is, of course, a higher ground where a cover is “just right” and I hope 37signals pulls that level off for the new book.
CM
on 03 Apr 09The ‘7 Habits’ and ‘Crucial Conversations’ covers don’t even seem ugly to me. They don’t seem designed according to an absolutely contemporary (i.e. 2009) design style, but I don’t find them ugly at all.
Jeff
on 03 Apr 09http://emprnt.com/theshelf/do-you-matter-how-great-design-will-make-people-love-your-company
This book just stands out on the shelves. Especially around the ugly business books.
ML
on 03 Apr 09I notice a trend of responses that imply “if it’s done that way, there must be a reason for it.” Apple could have said that about boxy, beige computers. Instead they created the iMac. Just because something’s been done a certain way for a long time, doesn’t mean it’s right or good. It just means it’s the status quo.
I don’t think these covers are effective because they’re ugly. They’re just ugly. I don’t think someone purposefully made them with bad typography because they thought, “Executives love bad typography.” I think it’s just lazy, bad design and no one does anything about it because they think the people they’re selling to don’t care. But that’s also what they thought when they sold only boxy, beige computers.
Sure, these books may have sold well. But that doesn’t mean there’s zero room for improvement.
Ty Nowicki
on 03 Apr 09I actually did the cover for “Safeguard Your Cash” that is pictured. The unfortunate thing with Business books is that the designer has little to NO power of the look of the book. The egotistical authors and mediocre design aesthetic of Sales and Editorial always wins out and the end cover is most often times than not, something that you just “put together” for them. Creativity, abstract thought, and “good design” are not really part of Business Books. That’s why they are suffocated by copy, reading lines, bursts, and quotes…
ratchetcat
on 03 Apr 09@ML – Well stated.
Anonymous Coward
on 03 Apr 09I should also add that business book meetings with marketing, sales, and editorial, include “Make it pop, make it look like this book from 1993 that sold well, the author asked his wife and she said…, big bold type, all type, we need bullets, etc.
The designers don’t enjoy having to do this. I’ve tried submitting more creative looking covers and they are always shot down because “the consumer wouldn’t understand. Let’s just add bullets” As stated before, we have little to zero room for creativity.
Headline
on 03 Apr 09Blogger on ugly blog snarks about ugly book covers.
Don Schenck
on 03 Apr 09Creativity is so underrated. It’s not encouraged in our school systems, is not appreciated, and is not valued—I’m talking dollars and cents valued.
Therefore, it suffers, often at the hands of what we call “Bean Counters”. And who is more likely to pick up a business book than a bean counter?
It’s a vicious cycle, one that can only be stopped by late nights around a small table with bottles of bourbon and large doses of 80’s music.
On that last point, I am not kidding. Get out of the damn office and into some totally different atmosphere and change your thinking for once.
You are not your fucking khakis!
Sorry … you hit a nerve.
powersthatbe
on 03 Apr 09Why business book covers are so ugly?
1. Sales 2. Marketing
They unfortunately have the power to sit in meetings and override everything, even what the author him or herself wants. They are not designers, telling designers how to design. Granted, they are doing their job, but it’s the age old battle of editorial vs. design vs. marketing vs. sales (who should just stay out of it). I never really heard of a designer sit in on sales meetings and veto their strategy or how they deal with clients.
Walt Kania
on 03 Apr 09The hard question is, if you prettied up these covers to meet a certain design aesthetic, would they sell better? Or worse?
Do customers buy a buiness book based on ‘look’? or for ‘this can help me make a million bucks’? I think sales pull rules here, not design. Sadly.
Zack Grossbart
on 03 Apr 09Walt Kania said it well, but I’ll add a little more. For many audiences design, or more accurately the frosting on the cake style of design, is a liability. There is a feeling of “if it was really good they wouldn’t have to pretty it up.” This also happens a lot in technical books.
Scott Semple
on 03 Apr 09In the spirit of Fit to be Used, do you want to mock up some quick comparisons?
I’m not a design professional, but I’d be interested to see some comparisons. It’d make it clearer, I think.
Tim is Annoying
on 03 Apr 09@Tim
Shut the F#$%^$%K UP….
Orange Juice
on 03 Apr 09This article about Tropicana seems relevant: A cleaner design caused a 20% drop in sales.
David Andersen
on 03 Apr 09@Ty and ML -
And yet, it’s not as monolithic as you claim.
“Look, here’s 7 books with somewhat unappealing design, therefore ALL business books have bad design. Sales and marketing and ‘egotistical’ (careful there, Pot) authors always win out over the unapreciated designer.”
I could easily find 7 ‘well-designed’ (whatever that actually means) business book covers too, what does that prove? Aside from disproving the ridiculous claims here, not much.
Frankly, Ty, your cover isn’t that bad.
You know what’s a cliche’ on the 37s blog? Designers bitching about how no one appreciates design.
David Andersen
on 03 Apr 09The Tropicana case is excellent fodder for discussion. Let’s hear it designers, which one is better? Why would you expect one to do better than the other?
brad
on 03 Apr 09Ty wrote “The egotistical authors and mediocre design aesthetic of Sales and Editorial always wins out”
Exactly. So many authors and other clients don’t understand that design decisions are usually best left to design professionals. Too often they think the only difference between themselves and a graphic designer is that the designer knows how to use graphics software. Big mistake. I deal with clients all the time who dictate design concepts to us; we push back on the worst ones but sometimes we simply have to give up and settle for mediocrity. They get what they deserve.
Chris Carter
on 03 Apr 09As a software engineer I could bitch about how many people are building applications on Ruby rather than using the “pure” language of C that provides resource efficiency and spits out a perfect binary representation of the data that I want, thus achieving an equilibrium of performance and data perfection….but that’s not realistic. It would take me lord knows how long to develop my application at such a low level and the benefit would not outweigh the cost.
Sometimes you have a finite amount of time, a finite budget, and you want to make the biggest return on those constraints that you can. If enough people buy the book, the decision to not invest in a “professional” designer obviously paid off.
If I’m building server infrastructure, I could give two shits about whether the case for my computer is beige or clear manufactured plastic. I can tell you which one will be cheaper, though. Again, if it works – why fix it?
Lazlo
on 03 Apr 09Matt & Co., just FYI—our company blocks personal network storage sites at the firewall for security reasons. That means none of the images you’ve been hosting on Amazon S3 lately show up with your posts.
I’m not saying you’re “bad” for doing this but you may not have been aware of the consequences. (Seemed relevant since this is an all-image post.)
Andre of loveyourportrait
on 03 Apr 09Here are some wild uninformed guesses to go along with the rest of the wild uninformed opinions on this page:
Because some business people are control freaks and micromanage the designers.
Because business books sell to the same people who buy stuff from similarly looking ads in the newspaper offering 30-day MBAs on a DVD-set.
Because business books are the PC market of books.
Chris
on 03 Apr 09Seth Godin’s books all have very well designed covers, in my opinion.
Jason
on 04 Apr 09Who buys a book because the cover looks cool?
It has zero bearing. Have you ever been in a bookstore holding a book and said, “Well, gosh, I’d buy this if the cover was designed better… but forget about it.”
The design has nothing to do with a person’s buying strategy.
Design doesn’t persuade. Only titles and blurbs do.
For a real world study of the difference titles make just google “The First Hundred Million by E. Haldeman Julius”
Jason
Ashley
on 04 Apr 09I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong. Good design is a good first step towards a better business…who markets towards creative people. But for the rest of the world, it barely matters…and could even put people off (good design can easily be boring to somebody who doesn’t appreciate it.)
It’s just like those scammy looking sites with a 10,000px high pages we’ve all seen, telling us why we NEED some product (often eBooks) — but they’re designed that way because that’s what a hell of a lot of people want to see; or should I say, would more likely buy because of the design and page content.
Mike
on 04 Apr 09Sarah was wrong and so are you.
The real kicker here is this – if you’d said look at how great these designs are, the same people would have commented in a manner that is 180 degrees opposite of their current comment.
That’s when you can tell that you’re posts are starting to fall into the Valley of Irrelevance.
John Rockefeller
on 04 Apr 09You forgot the goatsee-covered book: http://joeclark.org/book/
Janet Goldstein
on 04 Apr 09The covers highlighted all serve different purposes and do so fairly well; they don’t represent the “classy” covers of many recent business bestsellers. 7 Habits retains classic 1980s look; Ram Charan is strong, newsy, actionable; one is professional; etc.
Consider an alternate selection such as: Tribes, Nudge, Made to Stick, 4-Hour Work Week, Whole New Mind, Good to Great, etc., etc.
Speaking as a long-time editor, not a designer, I know how hard it designers work to come up with the perfect high-concept look for book after book-often with titles that don’t lend themselves to images-and with competing demands from publishers, authors, and sales. Plus, the covers need to stand out on the bookshelf, be readable online, and convey all the information (often times too much information)in a readable way.
slnc
on 04 Apr 09Orange Juice: after I opened that link the first thing I thought was: “Why did they put the new version on the left?”.
I can understand the drop in sales: if I were in the supermarket I would have picked the left one without a doubt: it’s more appealing, has a cleaner design and looks healthier.
Tim Maly
on 04 Apr 09It’s too bad that we can’t run the same kind of “different landing pages” tests on books cheaply (or at least that people haven’t been).
I’d like to see the sales figures on a two versions of the same book with different covers. See if all of these theories about ugly books are actually born out by the evidence.
Reg
on 04 Apr 09This is my favourite ugly book cover. Tony Robbins is an inspirational character, but this just incredibly bad.
http://tiny.cc/DdskE
superf88
on 04 Apr 09” A good first step toward business success: Realize design matters.”
Must disagree.
As a business, I’d pick the horribly designed book (or for that matter, a horrible book) with the Mafiosa-like grip on every Business School reading list (which account for most sales of business titles) any day.
(Though I do agree w your position from a design pov!)
iynque
on 05 Apr 09I work at a bookstore, and I think this every time I have to mess with the business books.
Anonymous Coward
on 05 Apr 09You can’t be serious. Most of those books are fiction, and because of the covers you can’t tell what they’re for??
Good lord, man. Barbarians and the friggin’ gates.
Happy
on 05 Apr 09@ML: I agree with your point that there is always room for improvement. I think what you are seeing in the responses is that when you say “A good first step toward business success: Realize design matters.” that sounds like a phrase used when advising someone or something that has not taken any step toward success. The examples you used are beyond needing a first step. As mentioned many times before on svn, words do matter.
Qian Wang
on 05 Apr 09These aren’t business books, except maybe the PM book. These are self-help books bought by business people (among others). And buyers of self-help books respond to in-your-face marketing. Think Dr. Phil and Suzy Orman and their brand of tough-love, straight-talk, chew-you-out advice.
Also, buying self-help products is largely an impulse decision, much like buying from an infomercial. Why is Billy Mays (the Oxyclean guy) so loud? Why is the ShamWow guy so annoying? Because it sells. Being louder or more obnoxious helps you stand out. Being cheap or low-rent looking sends the message that it’s an inconsequential purchase with little downside if it doesn’t work out. Just like Oxyclean, most self-help books promise to make the fabric of your life brighter and stain-free, but most people know that it very well may not work. But surely it’s worth a try at only $9.99 (plus S&H), especially if you call in the next 10 minutes.
Believe me, these guys know the importance of design and they are making a lot of money by designing for their intended audience.
Diego Scataglini
on 06 Apr 09Matt, are you joking? Did you ever take a gander at Getting real’s cover? Why don’t you start by asking Jason & co. why that cover so ugly. Or why Defensive Design for the Web is printed with gray type on gray paper. I first thought I got a fudged copy but they were all like that. It’s like trying to read a book covered in mud.
Roderick van Domburg
on 06 Apr 09Because it’s about the contents.
Lauren
on 06 Apr 09I’m enjoying this lively discussion—and I agree that most business books are ugly. They’ve been ugly for 20 years. In my time the first “business” book that broke out into the mainstream was “In Search of Excellence,” which I remember looking like a textbook. It was a huge success, and soon there were many other books that imitated it.
And then it became a chicken and egg thing. We expected business books to look a certain way, and if they looked different, it was a marketing risk. Somehow the fiction market has avoided this situation. I think fiction books look SO much better than they did 20 years ago. And yes, sigh, I have bought a book for its cover!
Richard
on 06 Apr 09I’d say at least part of the reason they’re so ugly is because of the long titles, and long subtitles, and long sub subtitles. That doesn’t justify all of it, but when you have to fit a paragraph onto the cover you’re already in trouble.
As for the Tropicana containers, the problem is two-fold. One, store brands like Target have started to push design, so the container looked very much like store brands people are becoming accustomed to. The second problem is they forgot Tropicana’s BRANDING. Tropicana’s brand IS the orange with the straw. Put it back on the carton in place of that “elegant” glass of juice and there’d be no problem.
Don Schenck
on 06 Apr 09The cover of The Beatles’ “White Album” FTW!
Seth Godin
on 07 Apr 09I want to say that not ALL business book covers are terrible.
Ahem.
Now, here’s the question: does a great design aesthetic lead to more sales?
The problem is that we can’t answer this because all other things are never ever equal in this field. It’s untestable in the real world, because almost all sales are by word of mouth, so we can do a split test across stores.
What I do know is this: The business book is more than just a book, it’s a message about who you are and how you sound. And looking good on the cover pays dividends in the other places an author works.
I think the same thing is true for websites. A ‘pretty’ site might not convert better, but it has other benefits.
This discussion is closed.