Title: "On Telling/Selling a Book by Its Cover"

Author Corinne Katz explores the question: "What picture can help sell a thousand books?" (179)  Photgraphs, she explains, have many uses; Katz is here concerned with their usefulness as a marketing tool.  As she explains, "Different readings, conventions of representation, and institutional settings intersect on a book cover; a cover is a marketing device, an aesthetic production, and a representation that may relate to a book's content" (179).  Katz provides three ways to understand book covers: Telling as Allegorical Narrative; Telling as Categorizing; and Telling as Identity and Lure.  These three headings provide a useful matrix for considering the various uses of book covers.