It is rarely found in libraries and archives—at least not in one piece. If it is, then it is usually in a special location or an archival storage box, provided there is enough space to store it. It is rarely preserved in research libraries, as it is usually removed from the book and discarded without—or in some cases with—an understanding of its cultural significance. Research libraries discard it because a book must be loaned and used as a single material unit; to use Foucault's terminology, it is a “parallelepiped.” Public libraries also tend to discard it, although they sometimes cut it up, paste the more or less important additional information that it contains onto the cover of the book, and then—if they can afford it—laminate the cover so that this additional information, such as a blurb, is preserved more or less permanently. Dutch book collector Albert Samuel Abraham Struik used surveys to determine that only two libraries had ever purchased a book because of it. I am talking here about the dust jacket.

In the case of the German translation of Stephen King's novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999), published by Schneekluth in 2000, the popular saying “never judge a book by its cover” was carried too far and became ironic, as this edition forced readers who typically ignore covers and dust jackets to make a decision. It definitely put their taste and judgment to the test and thus differentiated itself enormously from more conventional book editions.

The same company had also published the first edition of the German translation of Stephen King's novel Carrie (1974) with a dust jacket, and the publication of the German translation of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon seemed to reflect a desire to continue this tradition.