19 Awesomely Designed Books From 2013 That Prove Print Isn’t Dead.
While we are reviewing the best books of 2013, it doesn’t hurt to check out some of the “beautiful” books produced this year. Yes, as the introduction to this post states (Dec.16, 2013), “physical IS beautiful”! If you are a booklover, then you know the attractiveness of an attractive book.
So, read the introduction here – and then go look at these book covers! Some are better than others, but you will appreciate the artwork on all. My personal favorite? The Penguin Drop Cap covers (See the image to the right.). And then also appreciate the fact that the printed book is far from dead!
The day the Kindle was released, pundits announced the death of print. Sure, maybe a few technophobic geezers or ironic hipsters would cling onto “dead trees,” but print was about to be quickly tossed in the dustbin of media format history. The argument is still made on a regular basis. Yet six years later, e-books have not cracked 25% of the market and the growth has dropped precipitously.
People like physical books, it turns out. They like them more than they liked CDs or Betamax tapes. Books feel nice. You can flip back and forth in them. They look awesome on a shelf. Hell, they even smell nice. Kindles are good too, especially on long trips where you don’t want to weigh your bag down with a dozen books. But print books can do many things that e-books simply can’t.
Not only have e-books not killed print books yet, they’ve actually made them better by pushing publishers to give readers a reason to buy print over digital. More and more publishers are doing beautiful and innovative things with design, layout, illustration, and cover art. Here are 19 books from 2013 that you’ll want to hold in your hands.
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