The Dress of a Best-Seller: a Visual Analysis of Graphic Features in Italian best-seller Front Covers in the year 2022

Abstract

In the field of discourse analysis, the importance of book covers as semiotic resources in communication has long been disregarded. This paper suggests that book covers, like the text within the book, are not only rich in semantic possibilities but also governed by visual grammatical structures that have a role in tempting the possible consumer. Using the theoretical framework of visual communication, fifty covers of the most-sold Italian best-sellers in the year 2022 have been analysed to unravel the potential characteristics that might have major role in the purchase process.