Cover to cover

Even though she is the chairwoman of the visual-arts department at Brigham Young University, Sullivan doesn't claim to be an illustrator. Actually, "I'm an insecure illustrator," she said. She does admit that having her last two book covers chosen among the 50 best in the United States has helped with her insecurities.

The name of Brian and Linda Sullivans' publishing company is DIMI Press. "Dimi" is Italian for "Tell me." As in, "Tell me a story."

It takes months to come up with the illustrations and covers for her husband's stories, Sullivan said. First she reads his story. Then she thinks about it, "for a very long time." She thinks about metaphors. Next she sketches, "for a very long time."

Eventually she'll transfer the sketches to tissue paper, then to lino cuts (linoleum blocks) and then she'll print 200 copies of the book.

She finished the cover for "FALL" in 2003, and although she hadn't finished the illustrations for the inside, she submitted the cover, and it won the AIGA contest. (It may be seen at the Marriott Library.)

With that success, Sullivan felt encouraged to submit a cover the next year, even though the inside illustrations for "The Best Thing About Being a Bird" weren't quite finished yet, either. That cover also won.

To be honored by the country's oldest design organization is fantastic, Sullivan said. Especially considering that theirs is such a small company. "We just tell stories," she said. "It is a very simple sort of artful thing."

Like many readers of his generation, Ken Sanders' father Stan has had no use for dust covers.

At their cabin in the Uintah Mountains, he kept two bookcases, one on each side of the fireplace. One case held the books he hadn't read, and these books were still in their jackets. As he picked up one of the new books, he'd throw the dust jacket in the fireplace, right away. When he finished the book, it would join its jacketless compatriots in the other case.

The elder Sanders collects bottles, postcards, golf balls — just about everything except books. According to his son, it doesn't bother him a bit to think about how much those discarded dust jackets might have been worth. The younger Sanders, who owns Ken Sanders Rare Books, said a dust jacket on an old first edition increases the book's value 10 times over. Maybe even 30 times over.

Ken Sanders said a first edition of "The Great Gatsby" currently fetches $100,000 with the dust jacket and $10,000 without one. He says a first edition of "Call of the Wild" might bring $35,000 with a dust jacket, but maybe only $3,000 without one.

As for Sanders, he loves the jacketless books, especially the ones like "Call of the Wild" with four-color imprints on their cloth or leather bindings. He loves the embossing. He loves the gilt.