All About Dust Jackets

Some Thoughts About Dust Jackets

We have all heard old time book sellers or collectors say that the dust jacket can be worth more than the book. Since that is not a written law backed by the full Faith, Credit and Force of the US Government, it depends. Every book and its dust jacket has its own story. People who like old hardcover books like to have the Dust Jackets if it was issued with one.

Dust Jacket or DJ - Most hardcover books since 1920 have Dust Jackets, Dust Wrappers in the UK, or DJ or DW, which are paper covers designed to help sell the book. On many books they have helped preserve the condition of the book as well. Many collectors prize Fine Dust Jackets, and as it was once common to discard them, the value of a scarce DJ can exceed that of the book.

A Chipped DJ has small edge pieces missing, a torn DJ has closed tears that may be invisible under a clear book jacket cover. If we describe a book as DJ, Fine, it is understood that the book is a hardcover with a nice DJ with no flaws. Some paperbacks have DJs, usually from France, where they are also called Wrappers. Some hardcover books have pictorial covers, with a color photo on the book itself, and no DJ came with the book. Wikipedia has a good essay on Dust Jackets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_jacket

Today many Dust Jacket's are click bait, hoping to get you to pick it up, click on it if online, and possibly buy it. Remember that books are tangible things, so what a book looks like matters. The jacket often has lots of information, such as what the book is about, the price, the name of the publisher and often a short bio of the author. Many book jackets, especially on later printings, will quote all the wonderful things that book reviewers have said about the book. It also has the book's ISBN, or International Standard Book Number.

Dust Jackets became important to American collectors in the 1920s and 1930s, when American novelists were writing and publishing what has been recognized as an American voice in modern fiction. However, we sell non-fiction books. The authors of the books on this website are telling true stories of their climbs or somebody else's climbs (unless they have something to hide.)

I like to say that the literature of climbing is really the story of the first ascents of the world's mountains. It is much more than that, such as offering histories of specific peaks or mountain ranges, or biographies of climbers. Even climbers who wrote their own autobiograpies may have left off the juicy bits from their climbs. The Everest, K2 and other climbs of the great Austrian climber Kurt Diemberger are often mentioned in other people's books. Kurt will sign the book as he is mentioned, but often writes ''See Summits and Secrets to see what really happened.''

Books are physical things, and everybody who buys hardcover books do it partially for the pleasure of having a room dedicated to that part of their life. How the spines of DJs look, especially the old ones, matters.

The paper used in dust jackets

In all honesty, the paper that was sometimes chosen for many older dust jackets was pretty shitty and did not hold up well. That was especially the case in the depression years, the 1930s. Also, publishers now may feel that dust jackets in 2024 are an anachronism. They can print the pretty cover on the book itself now, and no DJs are needed, thereby saving maybe half a buck. But over the years the publishers go up and down on this issue. People who buy hardcover books in the 21st century, when the book is available as a paperback or an e-book, want what they have always gotten. a book with stiff, unbendable covers (also called boards) and a separate paper dust jacket.

The second Life of Old ''New'' Dust jackets.

In the 1980s through the 2000s when we stocked more front list books, which is book speak for newly published books, I would call publishers to get extra copies of the DJs. Publishers print and hold extra DJs not for your benefit or mine, but for copies that are returned to them from bookshops unsold, and may look a little tatty, but with a new DJ can be sold again at full price.

Of course we sell most new books long before they need a new dust jacket, and we never return books to publishers. So now we are sitting on a cornucopia of brand new dust jackets for books published while we have been in business, and even before, from 1970s to today.

Even Into Thin Air first editions got returned from bookshops who could not sell the book in their market.

Our Summit Magazine Review Copies

In 2024 we purchased a few hundred books from the 1970s to the 1980s that had never been sold, until we purchased several boxes of their old review copies. We bought all that remained from the magazine's original owners, Helen Kilness and Jene Crenshaw. They started Summit in November 1955 and did their last copy in June 1989. So look for desciptions that say Like New or Very Fine.

We have hundreds of extra dust jackets. We tried listing and selling these extra DJs in the early 1990s, but they are not arranged in order (they are by size ) so it could take a while to find the right one. Then it needs to be shipped in a tube, which adds more expense. I pulled the plug on the extra DJs a long time ago. But we still have them.