Strange Marks on Book Cover - Hoping it's Not Mold????

Look like tiny printing defects or the kind of minor dinges, marks and dirt a book may pick up over the years if handled at all.

>1 TheSkaFish:

It's very difficult to tell from the photos you posted, even the close-ups.

>4 TheSkaFish:

Yes, it probably would help.

Also, what material is the cover? In some shots, it looks like a book cloth, but in others it looks like paper.

>6 TheSkaFish:

The book is a standard hardcover. There is no cloth or book jacket on it.

The boards still have to be covered with something. From the photos, they are obviously not just plain board. So there has to be cloth or paper or leather over the boards.

Honestly, these look like dirt or damage, not mold, though it's hard to tell for sure from photos. But I doubt that mold or mildew would be such perfect circles.

The brightness of the yellow makes me suspect it's related to the red ink. Some sort of moisture or solvent affecting the color.

They're not amazingly rare in solid color blocks printed in offset :

http://printwiki.org/Hickey
http://printwiki.org/Doughnut_Hickey

It really does look more like a printing artifact than anything else.