The image is a tapestry of the words “a novel” that appear on the covers or dust jackets of titles currently on the New York Times bestseller list.
It was created by David Friedman for a post at the Ironic Sans blog. “I guess just being a work of fiction isn’t enough anymore…You have to emblazen your book with a category on the cover so the book superstore employees know where it belongs.” says Friedman.
As Ron Hogan of Galleycat suggests “hasn’t this tag been semi-ubiquitous for at least a decade?”
I wouldn’t be surprised to find a direct correlation of the use of “a novel” tag increasing as the role of the book superstore in our culture increased.
The way things are going in another 10 years it might just say “a codex”!