During the time I was studying to be an editor, great emphasis was placed on the importance of the front cover of a book.  Less so, perhaps, in these digital days – we aren’t seduced any more by the colours, the stamped titles on the sleeve, the weight of the book or the smell of the paper itself.

In fact, the technology doesn’t allow us to be.

But front covers, even so, continue to tell their story – as we search online for a connection that manages to make that final sale.

There are two books out there at the moment which I’m currently considering whether to invest in.  They are competitors too.  Reviews can be found for “The Purple Book” here and “What next for Labour?” here.  And the criteria which I’m using to weigh up the final decision include technology, cost, perceived inclusiveness and ideological approach – and therefore their covers, too.

I generally buy my books from Amazon – and, lately, via the Kindle.  But, even so, I tend to hunt them out and read up on them first – using my PC and broadband as in the olden days.  Thus it is that further investigation led me to these two pictures – here and here respectively – of the front covers of the books in question.

There is little I can say about the cover of “The Purple Book”.  I believe it’s mainly written by people from Progress (a self-denominated “[...] New Labour pressure group which aims to promote a radical and progressive politics for the 21st century”) – and if not written by them, certainly sanctioned by this so-called party-within-a-party.  As Peter Watt says in his review of the second book I’m focussing on today:

I strongly recommend that people buy and read it. But there is a downside to The Purple Book: that it will, inevitably, be seen as being partisan. Because of course it is. Speaking as a fully signed up member of progress, I am completely comfortable with the direction of its partisanship. But the Labour party is a coalition (I know that this is a bit of a dirty word, but I think we may well have to get used to it) and there will be many therefore who dismiss The Purple Book simply because it is from the progress stable.

So what does the cover of the “The Purple Book” say to you?  Corporately impeccable surely; efficiently managerial too – this could, in fact, easily be an in-house publication from any multinational company out there.  From what Peter Watt says, this might not have been the intention – but, certainly, if you’re wandering randomly around a bookshop of bricks and mortar, this cover has a kingly version of New Labour written all over it.

I could never deal with purple as it’s always represented absolute power to me.

Obviously, then, if I’d been the editor of this book, and even keeping in mind Progress’s colours and public image, this would not have been the cover I would have chosen.  It says very few things – and the things it does say are wrong.

But then neither would I have chosen the cover for the second book, “What next for Labour?”.  A short time ago I had the opportunity to exchange a couple of tweets with one of its editors – and unhappily seemed to get him on the back foot, which really wasn’t my intention.  But one of his responses I really do have to take issue with – and it relates to the importance or not of a front cover:

@eiohel it is inside what matters and as has been said it has many women who have contributed inc 2 pieces on women, feminism and poverty

And I do understand how important the content of a book is; and I do understand how the cover is simply a frame.  But I also do most strongly feel that a frame is never simply a frame – and if we’re truly interested in selling our wares, the choices we make when we fashion that frame will, for better or for worse, also fashion our sales.  As well as the life, understanding and historical location our baby will enjoy from its public in the future.

So if you titled a book – most wisely in my opinion – “What next for Labour?”, what then would you be expecting to see on the cover?  Things relating to the past or things relating to the future?  Things relating to the 20th century or things relating to the 21st?  Leaders and pyramids or flat hierarchies and people?  Broadcast communication from the top to the bottom or networked dialogue of all in society?

Some of the latter, it has to be said, is to be found with the inclusion of what is presumably a computer screen.  But the rest of the image, at least to my mind, shows historical leaders who represent the past crouched around a very end-of-20th century way of accessing the virtual world which now commands our lives.

If the objective of the imagery used is to tell us that Ed Miliband is a bridge between the past and the future, then “What next for Labour?” is not the future but a reluctant present.

A reluctant present which is, currently, becoming a very miserable place to be.

In the meantime, whilst those of us who know Labour’s history – and even care enough to remember it – may dwell in its past with great intellectual and emotional enthusiasm, to the casual reader this book cover serves no purpose whatsoever: it signposts no young men, women nor children at all – nor indicates how they might explicitly form part of what’s on the horizon.

Which will I end up reading?  Probably “What next for Labour?”.  At least it has a Kindle version – even if at eight quid a throw it’s at the pricey end of digital downloads.  I’ll be able to search and easily highlight; flag up to my Facebook followers its wisdoms; carry it around with me wherever I go; and, alongside everything else I’ve got on the boil, drop in and drop out of its content whenever.

But if I do read “What next for Labour?”, it won’t be because of the cover.

The cover is to a book what the eyes are to a lover.  It’s the only way you can seduce a reader who has a million alternatives to choose from.

Remember that, dear political editors.  And try and do better next time.

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