In the United States, 54 percent of the adult population, 130 million citizens, has reading skills below the level of a 12-year-old (according to market researcher Gallup, 2020). Other recent studies show less dramatic numbers, depending on the counting method and the definition of low literacy. But those results are not encouraging either. According to the US Census Bureau, among others, 44 percent of adult Americans see a book less than once a year.
These are bitter facts, especially for a country that has traditionally put a lot of effort into book promotion. Since 1923 there has been the national election of Fifty Books of the Year (later renamed 50 Books 50 Covers), the oldest annual election worldwide for the best book covers, which in the past has also resulted in Dutch winners.
The US is also the only country in the world to have a separate competition for academic publishers, organized since 1937 by the Association of University Presses (AUP). The AUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show, which is touring North America from this month until May 2023, shows that academic publishers are also marketing their books with great inventiveness.
The AUP has 150 members worldwide, but just like in previous years, the result is quite an American gathering. Of the foreign entries (in eight categories, including poetry), this year only those from Aarhus University Press in Denmark and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press were awarded.
Also striking: in the cover category it is not the large institutions (Rutgers, Yale) that win the most prizes, but the smaller McGill-Queen’s University Press from Canada with five designs is at the top. Four of these are by the award-winning David Drummond.
In front of Bitter in the Belly by John Emil Vincent, a poetic reflection on the self-imposed death of a friend who had sunk into depression ‘like Jonah in the whale’, Drummond made a moving cover that, not coincidentally, also Moby Dick makes one think.
The AUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show 2022 is here on view.