…from the article “The Rabbi of Book Design: An Interview with Scott-Martin Kosofsky” on the AIGA website.

“But books (and print in general) have lost their pride of place. Book publishers, a group nearly always behind the curve, have failed to grasp that their online counterparts spend a lot of time and money concentrating on User Experience, while they remain unfamiliar with the concept. It wasn’t always that way, but when the professionalism and discipline that was demanded by metal type fell away, things got worse and worse, especially typographically. That transition period is long over, though you don’t see much evidence of it in trade books, because editors are usually clueless about graphic possibilities; they never know what’s possible and what isn’t (or what’s expensive and what isn’t).”