A great book cover is a remarkable balance between the conflicting needs of the author, the publisher, and the book itself. It adds to our understanding without spoiling our imagination, all while competing for attention in a crowded storefront.

The Book Cover Archive was my attempt to point some attention at my favorite designers and learn more about the discipline in the process. It fell into disrepair when I began working on Svpply full-time, but it remains one of the better and more helpful projects I’ve ever worked on.

The Book Cover Archive ran on a custom CMS and ran on top of the Amazon API. It was developed by Eric, who set it up so that all I had to do was type in a book’s title and all the metadata was pulled automagically (save for the designer, whose names I would collect and note during weekly trips to the bookstore.)