“I left Penguin in 1980 largely due to this dreadful cover, others like it, and an increasing frustration with the unions. Covers like this were being wrapped around pages of bulked paper to fatten out ‘the product’ and to give additional ‘perceived value’. When, from time to time, I overheard people in the marketing department referring to books as ‘the product’, I knew it was time to jump. The marketing people had won.”
(David Pelham, in Penguin by Designers, p. 153, Penguin Collectors’ Society, 2007)