Thursday, April 18, 2013

Judging a Book by its Cover

This is my example of a pretty cover
hiding a bad story. . .I really didn't
like this one.
Does the cover of a book really matter?

I really started to think about this the other day. To me it used to. . .I would see a book with a beautiful cover and start drooling and nothing would be able to stop me from reading that book. But then I got my first e-reader a few years back and I started to come across. . .how do I put this nicely. . .unattractive book covers. I would avoid these books like they had the plague and if I read them they would somehow reflect the way I myself looked.

Then one day I had an internal conflict. . .the cover was so horrible but the book sounded so interesting, and that saying "Don't judge a book by its cover" came to me and I cracked and got the book. It has been all down hill from there. I had never really understood that saying until I got that e-reader. . .I never come across a truly ugly book cover before than. 

Some of my favorite books have the most awful covers. . .they literally hurt your eyes to look at them, and some of the books I hated the most have covers that are amazing.

I feel like the cover of a book is a trick now to me. . .I can never really tell what I'm getting myself into anymore.

So now I ask you. . .Does the cover really matter?

6 comments:

  1. To me the cover does matter. It is the first thing you see and therefore it is what causes me to pick up the book. There are books that I have picked up solely based on the cover. There have also been books that I have bought because I liked the summary, but then once I got it home and put it on my bookshelf it has stayed there unread forever. I have a lot of unread books on my bookshelf, so I have quite a lot to choose from when I pick what book I wanna read next. Since I know that I like the plot of all of the books, since I wouldn't have bought the book otherwise, what sways me to pick up a book from my bookshelf is often times the cover.

    - Camilla
    happycompletehome.blogspot.com

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  2. I think the cover helps in that it's the first impression people get. The book can be awesome, and the description of the book might be brilliant, but it's the cover that usually gets my attention first. The cover doesn't mean the book is any good, but it is a tool to use to help get people interested. It's like going to a car show. They have pretty women standing around the car. The car might be really great in its own right, and the people that come look at it might walk away really happy they had a chance to look at it, but a lot of the people first come over to look at the pretty women and then stay to check out the car. J.L.M. Visada

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  3. I get what both of you are saying. . .It makes a lot of sense really, I guess I'm just a little odd when it comes to finding a book. The cover of a book doesn't really play a big part in it for me, it is the last thing I look at when deciding if I'm going to read a book or not.

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  4. On my kindle, I don't really care, I just don't see it as much. In a bookshop though, its only the covers I like that call me to pick them up and read the blurb to find out more. They won't really influence the final buying decision but they make an initial first impression. If I have heard good things and read enough reviews to know I should like the book, then the cover won't really matter. Happy bonus if I like it though :-)
    I do like clever book covers though, I consider them a form of art.

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    Replies
    1. I think that is what it is Trish. I only read on my kindle anymore and covers stopped playing a part in getting books because of this. The last time I read a hard copy book was a few Christmas's ago when I got a few as gifts from my husband. Now I just tend to over look them all.

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  5. For me, I find that the cover is really an indicator of the team behind a book more than the book itself. If a book has a cool cover, I usually associate that with (and while not right all the time, it is more often than not) someone with an eye for marketing and graphic design. Which means that the author had someone else take a look at their book. In the rise of self-publishing, sometimes it's good to know that someone else at least looked at the book before I did; it's my hope that it means that someone took an editing pen to it.

    Good question!
    Michelle @ Playing Jokers

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