Has anyone made their own dust jacket for a book?

This is a follow-up question from my previous inquiry about creating covers for hardcover books that do not originally come with dust jackets.

In my view, the use of a pure mylar book cover on a hardcover book without a dust jacket still poses a problem of getting the cover folds to stay in place without the use of tape (the books are too valuable to apply tape or some other adhesive).

Has anyone made a dust jacket and then inserted the new dust jacket into a paper-backed book cover like the Brodart Archival series?

I am thinking about using the paper insert from a Brodart Archival book cover as a dust jacket and then inserting this "dust cover" into another Brodart Archival book cover.

Do you have a better idea in general?

Do you have a better idea for the choice of using the paper backing from a Brodart book cover as the dust jacket?

http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/index.html

Yes. I have a relatively early Robin Hood book that was rebound. A jacket with the sort of decorated paper you might see in endpapers was made and the title page is reproduced in facsimile for the front. This is in a Demco jacket cover protector.

For books like the seven-volume Nature Display'd from the 1730s and 1740s with attractive full leather bindings, I opted for 5 mil covers that are fairly rigid and have the creases in the right places. They are completely removable but I can also handle the books without finger oils transferring to the leather.

A book called Shadow Castle was reprinted in a very generic cloth cover so I used the paperback art, scaled it to the right size and added the features of a publisher jacket, including teaser and author bio blurb.

Lacking any known surviving jackets for some titles, I have seen som collectors make recreations that used the frontispiece art or cover design.

The trick is being able to print on paper that is large enough. When doing Shadow Castle, I had access to an Epson printer that could use 13x19 Super-B size paper. A good print shop might be able to print from your files but some might balk if it looks too real like a copyright violation.

James

Crypto-Willobie

Thanks so much for the link! I can see where my $$$ will be going now. I have so many old books without covers.

de nada. i've never used them , though i've thought about it....

I know Mark Terry and have a couple of jackets he made. They are exquisite and clearly marked as reproductions so there's no question of fraud if the books are sold later.

I have made my own dust jackets. Mostly for my own amusement, and to decorate books that I bought secondhand which had no jackets. Usually I made a collage image from magazine pictures, a few times I used photoshop or adobe illustrator to create a jacket design. They were sized to fit the book, then inserted into brodart mylar sleeves. They're all marked in my catalog under "own design" here:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jeane&tag=Own%2BDesign

excellent ideas from so many people. I can see making one's own dust wrappers as an art form . could be fun to experiment between photocopier, a printer and a scanner. could one download a cover from the Internet and then use this as the basis to create a new cover. one could also use a copy of the title page positioned on plain paper to do a dw and then cover that in mylar. I recall visiting the Irma Stern Museum in CT and seeing a wonderful display of books with artists made covers. would copyright be an issue if one is only doing a one off and placing on one's own book and no sale is involved?

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In the U.S. there is a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act which outlines "fair use". Much of it is not well defined and several parts have not been tested in the courts to establish a legal precedent. In general, "fair use" is a legal defense: "I infringed but here is my allowed excuse for doing so." Certain uses such as using part of an item for a review or educational purposes are the main categories allowed under "fair use." The details are more complex than this.

In practice, if you just make a copy for your personal use (making your own book look nicer on the shelf) then it is unlikely that any copyright holder would even know that you are doing it so would not know to go after you for the action, whether justified or not by either party. If you started to sell these, then you could gain the attention of a copyright holder or someone representing them.

I would imagine that most images you can get online would not make print-quality images for DJs. You could do it but the screen resolution JPEG images that are most common on the web would look bad on book size printed. Perhaps some Photoshop manipulation could be done to improve this.

If one is making a completely new image for a jacket as an arts project, that would not be a copyright violation (unless copyrighted elements such as a photograph or clip art were taken without permission). I have seen art projects for Jules Verne books where a designer came up with new and very appealing covers for texts. Of course, they have to be sized for specific editions. This is not only the height and width of the front cover but also the thickness. When one designs jackets for Lulu print on demand books in the 6x9 inch format, you start to get an idea of what is involved.

I have received books that were former library copies where the jacket was some kind of student art project. Some of these were better than others. One type started with yellow paper and then added the titling and cover design to it.

If you are particularly concerned about the copyright issues and think you might be at risk of an infringement suit, you may wish to consult with an intellectual property attorney for one or a few hours.

James

Thanks for this detailed reply. I am going to have a shot at making one DW on A 4 and A5paper , use b and w colour and photocopier and chose an image from the specific book. then use water colours to add something special in effect . It would fall under fair use and be in the style of a homage to a particular author, it's going to be an architecture book....will report back on outcome . another idea is to use magazine clipping pages of clever adverts or photographs for covers. lots of ideas are now going ping! Local. Mag just published super b w photos of fashion shoots in front of iconic local buildings .... Perfect for dw for architecture books. Possibly insert title on spine with caligraphy pen.

I make my own dust jackets from scratch and repair existing ones that are ripping.
The trick is to use clear vinyl sticky shelf paper. It bends very easy and is not so sticky that it cannot be undone.
I have not found another material that works as well. Library dust jacket covers are great but they are not easy to make.
I make a blank with oversized edges (about 1.5 inches each end) and then cut out the 4 corners so that all 4 edges are folded over the existing DJ top and bottom first then the sides.
When I buy a book that doesn't have one I search on ebay for books that have good dust jacket photos with the inner leafs that are full and not angled. I print them in color and then use the clear shelf paper to line them.
They are very durable and do not rip easily.
I do this for my own library and do not try to sell them as original.
Clear shelf paper is running about $4 per roll now and I can make about 4 DJs for regular size novels and history books.