When “The Stick Chair Book” finally evolved from a vague notion into an outline, I knew instantly what I wanted to put on the book’s cover: a carving of a stick chair made by artist, fellow chairmaker and friend Rudy Everts.
Rudy made the carving last year, and it’s one of my most prized possessions. I keep it on a shelf in the front of the shop so I see it every day. I love the way the chair’s appearance changes during different hours of the day. And the carving captures everything I love about the form of these stick chairs, which I’ve been obsessed with for far too long. Though Rudy might dispute me, I think this carving is art.
And, as you can see in the image above, the thing looks fantastic as a book cover.
But then data and manufacturing considerations entered the picture.
During the Great Quiet of the pandemic I spent a lot of time digging into the 14 years of data we have on our books. Our customers and our books are not like the customers and books I knew from my time in corporate media. But I had no idea how different they were.
In the corporate media world, books with dust jackets and beautiful photos do very well. However, our customers see the world differently. No matter what the topic or who wrote the book, books with simpler cloth covers and diestamps are preferred to books with dust jackets and photos on the front. I have looked at the numbers a dozen different ways. It’s not even close.
When John and I started Lost Art Press, neither of us were interested in dust jackets. But Jennie Alexander insisted that “Make a Joint Stool From a Tree” have a nice dust jacket. And so John and I said: OK, we’ll let the authors drive this important aspect of their books. And so we have. And we will continue to do so.
When it eventually came to designing the dust jacket for “The Stick Chair Book,” I knew in my in-denial heart that a cloth cover with a diestamp would be the right approach for this book. It’s a shop manual, and a dust jacket is going to take a beating. Eliminating the dust jacket will allow us to reduce the retail price significantly. And that’s a big deal because this book is huge – it’s well more than 600 pages and in color. And, our readers prefer cloth covers.
So I’ve decided to do something we’ve never done before. When the book is released, it will have a cloth cover and diestamp. But you will also be able to download a free pdf of the dust jacket with Rudy’s carving on the cover. You can send this pdf to your local print shop and the employees can print out a perfectly sized dust jacket for your book.
(Side note: We investigated selling the book with and without a dust jacket. The jackets would have to be manually added at the warehouse. It was stupid expensive.)
I hope this is the right path. The book will be more affordable, which will lower the price barrier for some customers. And customers who love a dust jacket can easily make one for themselves (and make another if the first one ever wears out).
On the days when I have to make these hard decisions, I wish I worked at the gas station instead.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The carving is now on the title page in the book, and it looks great.
Dust jacket not needed. Looking forward to the book. Maybe someday I’ll make a chair or two.
LAP occupies the same space in my head as academic publishing. Simple cloth cover have always seemed more honest to me in that context.
What a great carving! Really looking forward to this book.
Good call. It’s a beautiful image, and would make a lovely t shirt or poster….but I’m one of the folks preferring the cloth cover. I always want to bin a dust jacket. They just make reading awkward and a guilt ridden affair every time the stupid jacket slides up or down and receives a new crease.
I really like this idea as you can also replace them as needed if you take it to the shop! It is also a great carving.
I’m with the minority…. erm…. majority. Dust jackets are like super cars–great as pinups, terrible to live with.
Excellent dust jacket option and a good decision.
The First thing I do is to remove the dust jacket anyway and then decide where to store it.
Thanks Chris and John
Not that my opinion matters, but what would be most excellent is a cloth cover on the book (done) and a poster sized image of that beautiful carving with the book title. I would much rather have a poster than a dust jacket. I would be happy to print my own poster if the size and resolution is appropriate.
Haha Justin – you can’t trick me into flushing away money on a poster for sale.
We’ll offer the carving image free for posters at a high resolution.
NO tricks! I know the struggle is real 🙂
I am very happy to print my own. I’ll admire it on my wall every day.
The world changes. Many woodworkers have CNC tools in their shops today. Perhaps you could publish a digital file for reproductions of this wonderful chair carving. A new profit center for publisher and artist.
For what it’s worth I remove all the dust jackets as soon as I get them! Don’t worry I’m not a savage – I store them neatly and flat in a large folio if I ever wanted them on my books again. Which would be never.
Dust jackets are pretty. I have never read a book while the dust jacket is on the book. I take a book off the shelf, remove the jacket, then read. They are just too fragile, and I feel guilty if they get damaged.
For a dust jacket on a book that gets considerable use, I laminate the jacket in a light but extremely durable plastic. Fortunately I have both large-scale color printers and a laminator to do my own.
Perfect solution for the dust jacket dilemma: let the readers print their own. Few will.
The dust jacket layout you showed is artfully done, almost a pity not to print it! The effort might not be wasted though: in the future someone might come up with a creative use for the pdf versions in a printed poster or social media posting.
Now you’ve started something: bet there are going to be calls for the pdf versions of all past dust jackets from LAP.
Very much looking forward to The Stick Chair Book.
There are ways to keep a laminated dust jacket on a book so it does not slip or make it hard to handle, and it has the added benefit of protecting the cloth jacket from wear. Dust jackets are more than marketing tools and temporary art. If the dust jacket pdf is of high resolution, I will make the front cover into a poster in Photoshop, print it on my archival 11-color printer and frame it!
Can confirm your choice. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. In my case, if I want the book accessible on the built-ins in the living room, according to my wife, it must be a pretty binging with simple colors and stamps. Yes, she infuriatingly insists the books are color coded as opposed to my preference on categorizing according to the contents. It works out ok, particularly since I’m no particular fan of dust jackets either. Unless there’s dust on my jacket (chore coat). Love the carving, looking forward to the book, and am in the majority of your customer base, I suppose. Cheers!
Just your story regarding the lack of a dust cover is good enough for me to print, fold, and use as a bookmark.
I always remove the dust jacket first thing. They are much more trouble then I want to deal with in my shop. My books live on the bookshelf’s in my shop for ready reference, the important ones in the bookrack on my desk.
Yes, without any doubt, Mr. Everts’ relief carving is art of the first order. It is beautifully conceived and superbly executed. As a woodcarver myself, I would gratefully hang the thing itself up on my wall for permanent display and enjoyment, and I would expect to pay a good deal of money for the privilege. As a dust jacket, it would be an attractive, but poor, reproduction of the real thing, that I would never hang on my wall. In a few years, it would be miserably beat up, torn, and ugly, like all the dust jackets on every book I own that has them. You’ve chosen wisely and well. Anybody who decides for possible commercial purposes to start reproducing this relief carving in wood using CNC production techniques should first consider Mr. Everts’ intellectual property rights to it.
And the chair it models is also very nice.
Always happy to carve you something, Kevin!
Yes, I am not so sure about CNC reproductions. I think CNC can be great but not to imitate an actual carving. Thank you for your nice words about the carving.
The image of Rudy’s carving with the title at the bottom looks fantastic. Looking forward to see how it will come out in a diestamp. It’s nice of you to offer the dust jacket for free as a pdf for those who want it, that’s good customer service!
With all due respect (a great deal), Jennie was wrong. LAP books are tools and belong on a workbench. Dust jackets belong on shelves and coffee tables or in actual bookstores where they may ensnare a customer. If a buyer opts for a dust jacket and it gets destroyed on the workbench, they can readily replace it (maybe when their chair-making days are over and the book goes to honorable retirement on a shelf or coffee table. Good call.
I think “dust cover” is a misnomer – it’s really there for bookstore displays (remember them?!). But the post is a good example of why I support LAP – thoughtful decision making with a strong eye on quality, explained to the customers. I also like the pdf option, including the book itself. With that, I can print a few pages so they get stained/torn/whatever in the shop, not the book itself! Thanks for your work!
“No matter what the topic or who wrote the book, books with simpler cloth covers and diestamps are preferred to books with dust jackets and photos on the front.”
I find that fascinating… I’m in the camp that removes the dustcover when I sit and read a book – it just gets in the way. But I can’t fathom buying or not buying a book – irrespective of author/content – based on the type of cover. Maybe it’s not the aesthetic consideration per se, but a function of cost? The type of cover is correlated, but the purchase price is the cause?
Hi Horace,
The adage “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is completely wrong. Many buyers make a lot of value judgments about a book based on its cover. The data from my time in corporate is overwhelming. And I think it holds true for our customers, too. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Interesting. You have experience and access to data I do not – I’m sure your conclusions are accurate. Not the first time and won’t be the last time that I don’t understand how a lot of folks make decisions. ;>)
As you say Chris, the carving is a work of ART; it would hang or rest nice as a bronze with both astists names at the bottom…
Good call Chris. The (only) good thing about a dust jacket is the use of an inner flap as a bookmark.
You could always do a run of bookmarks specific to this book that have the carving depicted. I bet I’m not the only one who’d use theirs until it was tattered and worn.
Remember when we made “Dust Covers” for our textbooks in elementary school out of old brown paper bags, then neatly folded and carefully taped them to our textbooks, adorning each with our own artwork? Dust covers on books have always made me think of this, and the pretty and colorful ones belong on coffee table books. Now, if you design a book, in the future, intended strictly for coffee tables, I’m all in, but otherwise they make handy bookmarks, and are a nuisance mostly.
That brought back memories.
A whole life of feeling like a heathen, removing and typically misplacing dust jackets as soon as I pick up a book, and thinking that made me a bad bibliophile…as I am told the kids say these days, “I feel seen!”
Now if you can figure out a way to let me dog-ear pages without guilt…
That carving is stunning.
Love the carving and very much looking forward to the stick chair book.
Hate dust covers and thought I was in the minority. First thing I do after receiving a nice hardback book is throw away the dust cover.
Print your own dust jacket! Thats a great idea!
I don’t keep dust covers. l like your use of diestamps. I do, however, keep my empty Lie Nielsen boxes, I just can’t part with them….
I’ll gladly take the cloth cover and then commission Rudy to make a stick chair carving for me. Can’t wait for this book!
Always happy to carve you something, Kevin!
Sounds good, Rudy, sure hope we get to meet in person soon enough!
I think it’s because you started out without dustjackets, it’s your brand. Good quality, no nonsense. Dust jackets are too shiny for Lost Art Press.
Those of us who own your books, own them with pride and they are instantly recognizable on the shelves of other woodworkers on YouTube, blogs, instagram, etc. Those cloth covers mean good, useful books. It’s instant respect when I see them on the shelf of a fellow woodworker…though I’d love to see a sticker on the spine that says, “I actually read this book”
Any chance this book will be produced by mid August? I’d love to swing by LAP on a x-country trip I’m doing and just get it!
Probably not. We are experiencing huge production delays in our printing plants. If we get i to press by June 30, it will be done in early September.
Sometimes I really like dust jackets. And as such, I’m looking to purchase a dust jacket for the Handsaw Essentials book. I’ll pay a fair & reasonable price for a pre-owned Handsaw Essentials dust jacket.
P.S. The book must be inside the dust jacket.
In my opinion, you made the correct choice. That’s even without considering the environmental impact.