For instance, I would argue that, famous as the book may be, there is no iconic cover of Lolita. There is some relationship, of course, between a book’s inherent popularity and endurance (we might call this its “classic” status) and the recognizability of its cover, particularly its first cover, if it was done right, and there can also be a relationship between the quality of design itself and its iconic-ness, but neither of these things are necessarily predictive. (That’s an admittedly hazy threshold, but what isn’t these days?) That is: the most iconic book covers exist as cultural artifacts that are attached to, but slightly separate from, the books they were designed for. But in order to compile this list, I looked for recognizability, ubiquity, and reproduction-that is, if there are a million Etsy stores selling t-shirts/buttons/posters/tote bags with the book cover, or if someone you know has ever dressed up as it for Halloween, or has a tattoo of it, it probably counts as iconic. What makes a book cover iconic? There are no hard and fast rules, of course-like anything else, you know it when you see it.
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