Poking about in my local library this morning I came across practically a whole set of Kent's Bolitho series in paperback with their new designs - all photographic.

I can't say I much care for this, seemingly, present trend of cover design; I much prefer to see an artist's work, whether it be original for a cover of a particular book, or whether they are from the NMM or elsewhere.

It all seemed to start, IMO, with Stockwin's reprints of the Kydd series, where it's a combined photographic image along with a bit of art, but I really do not like wholly photographic covers; even the latest Donachie, An Awkward Commission, has gone into a photographic design.

No doubt, Susie has some comment in her professional capacity, but my humble opinion is that I do not like them; give me a nice painting any day!

Whilst I agree with Mil in support of paintings, one reason for the increased use of photography on the dust jacket of books is because of cost and time. Stock photos manipulated by Photoshop and other software applications are cheaper (no recurring copyright or reproduction fees, for example), whilst commissioning an artist or illustrator specifically or even using existing work is often expensive and rarely justified by the accountants who now seem to run publishing houses!

Interestingly though, the early published works of Douglas Reeman and Patrick O'Brien sold very much on the strength of the full colour reproductions of paintings, often commissioned specifically for each book! In both examples the relevant publishers found this out by conducting reader surveys. So, rhetorically, given the evidence, why are publishers resorting to what are often very poorly composed and edited photographic imagery...?