Medusa

You turn and look, and there she is—beautiful, mysterious, seductive in the midst of her drab sisters. Your breath catches in your throat. More than anything, you want to pick her up—caress the soft, smooth texture of the cover, trace the line of the emboss, smell that new-paper perfume. The outlines of the die-cut are a little rough to touch, teasing you with a glimpse of the case beneath her dust jacket. Before you know it, you’re lost in her flap copy, still stroking the silken front cover as you fall deeper and deeper under her spell.

It’s called Feel Appeal—the textures, colors, and effects that make you want to touch what you see. A book with strong feel appeal gets noticed, admired—and taken home, far more often than her plain siblings. A bookstore browser looks at a book’s cover for only a few seconds, but if that cover entices a reader to pick the book up, it’s far more likely to go home with him tonight. Feel Appeal is a powerful allure—if a book looks interesting to touch, it’s going to be picked up.

The Feel Appeal Index measures four categories of a book’s attractiveness and rates its overall seductive qualities—a perfect 10 on the FAI is that beauty in the first paragraph; a 1 is a piece of dirty Xerox paper on the floor. What does the FAI measure?

1. Size
The trim, the spine, the weight, the shape—an uncommon figure catches more attention in a crowd or on a shelf. Some books increase their Feel Appeal with a smaller trim size—5 x 7 is shorter, smaller, thicker than you’d expect, petite, compact, intriguing. But even 9.5 or 10 x 6 presents a significantly different silhouette than the typical 9 x 6—taller, slimmer-seeming, exotic. Even in a line spine-out on a bookshelf, an unusual trim size breaks the line of the ordinary, expected 5 x 8’s and 9 x 6’s to present something different—maybe something extraordinary.

2. Visual texture
Shiny metallics and foils gleam in the pale fluorescent light and add flash and sizzle to the shelf. Elkote and spot varnish make slick reflective surfaces to contrast with soft, sophisticated mattes. Every so often, you even see a book that’s not afraid to show off a lot of bling, like ink on foil or glitter. If it’s classy, it’s hot.

3. Tactile texture
The ultimate touch appeal is texture you can feel—rough Rainbow paper; soft ribbed cotton blends; smooth, cool linens. Little ridges of embossing, valleys of debossing. Die-cut shapes, the cut edge of the paper palpable and some small piece of the unseen case visible beneath, like peeking through a keyhole. When a book's design incorporates these elements, it’s flirting with every customer in the store.

4. Color
You can’t feel color. But a luscious, vivid red, a wicked, mischievious green, or a rich, serene blue can capture the eyes with the sort of siren beauty that lures the hands to follow. Color emphasizes the book’s other feel appeal attributes, giving foil stamping a background with contrast and allure, heightening the effect of a die cut or emboss, and making sure no one can overlook that unusual trim size.

Of course, like any measure of attraction, the Feel Appeal Index is subjective. One reader’s Venus is another’s Medusa, but in the world of books, no one beauty rules the others. Take home as many young lovelies as you want. If you face any interrogation from a suspicious spouse, just tell the truth—you were seduced.

TIP: Check out hot covers from the New York Times Book Review or take a peek at Foreword's hot-or-not book design page. Then discuss with other book-watchers.