Judging a Book by Its Cover: How Inclusive Are Jacket Designs of Popular Medical Books

Abstract

Popular medical books disseminate information widely. Publishers attract readers partly by the cover art, but how inclusive are such book designs? Here, we analyze popular medical books published in the past five years and available on Amazon.com, determining the proportion of those with typographical covers and those with cover illustrations containing photographic images of one or more people. For the latter, we recorded the race of those depicted. We also analyzed medical images from three major stock photo companies. We determined that the majority of recent book covers are typographical, whereas older books are more likely to have photographic covers, and those covers were more likely to depict Whites only. Stock photographs, in contrast, significantly overrepresented Whites as both doctors and as patients. Physicians who write popular medical books should take steps to ensure that their publisher will create a book design that is inclusive of all members of society.