What is a book?

            To some a book is nothing, to some, it’s all they have. To me a book an essence of the writers true nature. When reading a book we don’t really notice how much it is about not just the inner meaning of the whole text, but also the outer appearance of the cover. It’s obvious that you’d rather take a book that relates to you more, it’s like talking to a person, you have to have similar ideas and/or interests, or otherwise it’s simply tedious. But why is it that we try to grip for the feeling of the book, and not just the text? The true answer to that is that the book is the writer. The writer chooses how it looks, sounds, even feels, it’s like their clothes and voice. But now imagine not having any cover, simply a text, rough and dull.

            Reading. If all of us try to deeply analyze what we actually do when we read, it’s not just the way that we see and read the text, it’s also our body feels it. If you never even thought about it, think of this; what would you do if you had a small paperback book, or a large hardcover book, different feel, different approach. Now imagine always reading on the same exact metallic machine, no feel, always the same. The author no longer can express his/hers’ persona and how they wanted the reader to see the story, before they got to read it.

            Tom Piazza had a very good quote about why a book just loses its nature if it doesn’t have a cover “But it’s like looking at a book of paintings where Guernica is the same size as a Holbein portrait. You get no sense of the scale of things, of the nature of the artist’s ambition”. The quote basically states that without a cover all books are the same in their nature and artist’s choice. I must agree with the quote, the cover is something that attracts you (Most of us), and there can’t be attraction to a specific book, if all books are the same, as simple as that!

            To summarize, my idea can be simply described in 3 easy questions. Does a book need a cover? “Yes, it does, without it, we would probably never notice the small jewels among the waves of glass”. Can a book still be special without a cover “Yes, it sure can, but the cover is still rather important on a psychological and physical level, without it, its just not the same, and you are left to hope that the plot of the book will pay for the price of not having a cover.” Lastly, if you had two choices of buying the same book, would you rather buy a digital one for less, or a real one but expensive? “Rather a broad question, it really depends on the price difference. But if the price for a good book didn’t come to a point where a physical copy would cost more than twice the price of a digital one, I’d still rather get a real one.”