Books may be made up of words in plain old black and white, however they are also the colour covers that they are adorned with.

When we purchase a book it becomes something really very personal to us. It can sometimes be strange seeing a book you enjoy with another book cover, simply due to the fact that it is not your book. This personalisation, and certainly ownership, of books was at a completely various level at the origin of the age of printing, with book covers being created by the owners themselves, and what they thought would be the best books covers for the text. They would purchase the book itself from the printer wrapped in paper, then bring it to a binder who would bring in the covers to the client's requirements. This normally meant being outfitted in leather and then engraved with the name of the book, and, typically, the name of the book's owner. People like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can most likely appreciate the ownership that individuals come to feel in relation to their books.
We love checking out books because they are really gorgeous things. This holds true, but the nature of beauty that we might be speaking about is definitely different to what we might be speaking about if we were discussing, say, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have actually had books we have decorated them with beautiful book cover designs that effort to mirror the charm of what is within. This dates back for as long as the codex itself has actually been around, with medieval monks, those charged with the defense and procreation of the scarce texts that could still be discovered, ornamenting each hand written text with remarkably rich and stunning designs. In fact, such was the charm held within these books that many of these creative book cover designs were sculpted into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of rare-earth elements. People like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can most likely appreciate the manner in which the beauty of these book covers was created to match the beauty within the book.
When you truly think of it, it is quite remarkable that a book's cover, no matter how beautiful it is, manages to stand so eloquently for something that is nearly the complete antithesis of its art format-- writing in black and white. In fact, book covers have actually been created to reflect the ambiance of a book and appeal to its designated audience ever since the dawn of large scale publishing in the Victorian Period. Artists were tasked with discovering what makes a good book cover for specific individuals, or in other words, marketing. Individuals like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can probably value the function of marketing in designing book covers.