Hardbacks are having a pretty rotten time at the moment, with rapidly diminishing sales and rising cover prices. Publishers have to work harder than ever to make their hardbacks covetable things of beauty that justify the price tag. They need to be stunning and tactile, with beautifully written, compelling text to draw the reader into their world.

How depressing, then, to see this lame excuse for a hardback — and particularly this utter waste of a back cover. Surely, SURELY, the days are gone when a couple of generic quotes were considered enough to make someone spend money on a premium book? Blurbs need to sell, to convince, to enchant. This text does none of those things… and it looks unbelievably boring as well.

Can you think of any other product category in which this sort of thing would be acceptable? This makes us want to weep.

Come ON, publishers — put some proper selling copy on the back of your hardbacks. Build the design around that copy to make it sing. Get us excited by what we see there. Show us that you believe in your book and we might believe in it enough to shell out £20.