What is the back cover of a book for? Once upon a time, in a land long ago, people would see the front of many books, and pick one. The front of the books enticed people to pick them up, turn the book around, and view the back. Then the writing on the back would convince the shopper to buy the thing by saying ‘quality’, and ‘recommended by the Guardian’.

Nowadays the front of the book is a thumbnail on a website. People learn about the book through websites and video reviews. Where does the back of the book fit into this process? What does it do?

If it doesn’t do what it once did then it’s broken. That makes it fertile grounds for something new.

BIND still doesn’t have stable covers for all the books, but I’d like to make a standard template, and have something basic for each one.

Brutalism

Revenant wrote a piece on Brutalist RPG Design and the importance of re-usability.

Each book sits in a git repository with a README.md file. Perhaps part of that README.md could also be a short blurb which goes onto the back of the book, and onto all of those <itch.io> pages.

Architecture has another concept we might steal:

Truth to the materials

Any material should be used where it is most appropriate and its nature should not be hidden.

Perhaps the cover should come with its own printing instructions.

The “underlying material” might mean the bare-ass text, i.e. LaTeX. Maybe each book could get the output from the LaTeX build process stuck straight onto the back in a mono-space font.

\@tempa=\box97
(/usr/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/amsmath/amsopn.sty
Package: amsopn 2022/04/08 v2.04 operator names
)
\inf@bad=\count307
LaTeX Info: Redefining \frac on input line 235.
\uproot@=\count308
\leftroot@=\count309
\tcbfitdim=\dimen327
[10]
Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 89--90
[][]\T1/txr/b/n/10 March-ing Mush-rooms \T1/txr/m/n/10 re-lieve tired-ness when
 []

(./config/character_sheets/front.tex
\tcb@box@array@box=\box138

Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 63--64

 []

[2])) (./cc.tex
Chapter 1.

Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 2--2
 [][][][]
Underfed goblins (badness 10000)
[1

Maybe this will look less like honesty about the materials, and more like an active attempt to expose the innards once it’s printed. Maybe it’ll feel charming. One can never tell how the results will feel until handling the book.

I don’t know the best solution here, but I know this: it must be cheap, and this is cheap.