In our recent interview with Jeff Belle of Amazon Publishing in Seattle, we quizzed him about the importance of book jacket design in an age when book sales are increasingly migrating online.

This is a guy who could call it like it is and say, that, perhaps, postage stamp sized covers don’t mean a great deal any more. It is, after all, what comes up after you’ve searched. Maybe in an age of diminishing opportunities to see and touch physical copies of books, a good cover design isn’t going to make a potential consumer behave in any particularly way.

And yet and yet.

What Jeff actually said was.

“Actually I think it is more important now.”

Now it is true that maybe Jeff, who is a smart guy, was thinking his words were going to be read by, amongst others, a significant number of cover designers from within the whitefox clan, so, you know, don’t frighten the horses. But what he said was, as I read it, pretty unequivocal.

So when news reached us this week that one of the big four publishers are actively trying to solicit experienced designers to work on genre fiction for a newly launched imprint for the princely sum of £50.00 per cover, we thought we just had to make mention. £50.00. Really.

Why not crowd source a cover from students? Go on fiverr and get ten of them. But maybe think twice before you expect people with years of hard-earned experience, who have been responsible for creating some of the past few decades most iconic book jackets to bite your hand off at those prices. Is that really what a jacket is worth? Maybe send fewer people next year to walk Hall 8 of the Buchmesse in Frankfurt looking at their emails from back at head office and invest in better external designers. And sell more books. Just a thought.