The Hungry Heart by Peter Wells. 
Peter Wells writes about his new book, and its special cover.
Julian Barnes had this to say as he slipped $120,000 into his pocket for winning this year's Booker Man Prize. "... if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping".
The fact is the physical book is under increasing threat. The ebook is light and poses as a fashionable alternative to the death of trees. The book has to be special to survive.
As a reader, I have so many intense memories of the content of a book fixed by its look, the feel of the pages, the illustrations within. They seem melded together to the degree that the act of reading is indivisible from the book read. (Like my memory of Wind in The Willows. I loved the vivid green hardback cover, the intricate map inside the endpapers and those lovely line drawings of toads and moles all dolled up as if they've just stepped out the front door of Downton Abbey.)
You imagine books in your head as you read. This is the beauty of them. But a book as an object should suggest some of the pictures, hint at them, nudge you towards a possibility.
Possibility is what it is all about. Then there's another thing. Allegedly, a decision to purchase a book happens within the first three minutes.

The book cover, in a field of book covers, plays an important part in signalling an initial attraction.
In the past, I have worked with contemporary artists such as photographers Fiona Pardington and Deborah Smith and artist Martin Poppelwell to create book covers. The interplay between the artist and the content of the book is key. But so is the element of trust. Over the years, you build up a name. There's also something simpatico about the relationship between the different art forms speaking to each other: word and image deal in ideas and concepts, it's just the medium they are translated through which is different.
Journeys with William Colenso came about by happenstance. I wanted to step outside the usual tasteful historical cover, using an older image. My book is a contemporary take on history with a personal theme running through it. The journeys in the title refer as much to my own changing perspective on Colenso and who and what he was - a deranged missionary, a crazed ego maniac, a man given to sexual restraint and sexual excess - or a curiously insightful individual who saw Maori and Pakeha relations from a unique angle. (Maybe he was all of these things, which only makes him more interesting.)

I needed a cover to message the newness of the take. The Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery had taken the bold step of commissioning Gavin Hurley to produce a new portrait of Colenso, one of the founders of the institution. Hurley's work stands out for his historical engagement. How many younger artists choose George Grey as a subject and make it new? His paintings and collages are winsome poems; they look back with eloquence. They seem enigmatic, cartoon-like and child-profound all at the same time.
Peter Well's full essay here.