Book Covers Flashcards
1
Q
What do book covers do
A
- reveal content
- create expectations
- affect interpretation (setting, protagonist etc)
- reveal info (title, author, publisher)
2
Q
Book covers are most importantly…
A
Advertising
3
Q
Paratext
A
Paratext is a catch-all term for the parts of a book that aren’t the narrative itself.
(front cover, back cover, blurbs, dedications, reviews, things the author has said in interviews, artsy bookstagram photos)
The term originated in the work of Gerard Genette, who titled his French-language book on the topic “Thresholds.” Essentially, paratext is everything that meets the reader at the threshold of reading: what they encounter once they already know the book exists, but before they start to read it.
Genette argued that paratexts affect how readers receive the books they pick up.
