Judging a book by its cover
People say trite things about how you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. In the publishing industry, we talk about how important it is that a cover be well designed so that people will be inclined to buy it. That heavily implies, of course, that people do in fact judge a book by its cover.
Now: a couple of provisos… if they’ve already decided to buy the book — based on your writing ability or some previous relationship they had with you, they probably won’t care too much what your cover looks like.
Similarly, I think cover design is more important in certain genres. History books and text books might not need as much attention as sci-fi and literary fiction.
Anyway, over at Well Medicated, there are 45 nicely designed covers. It’s kind of fun. Some I’m not as crazy about as they were, but some of them are incredibly great. I liked the one to the left particularly. The cover for Breakfast at Tiffany’s was great, too. I think I have a tendency to like the simpler designs. It’s certainly partly personal preference, but there are some things that make for good design. Did you have a favorite?
I like Freakonomics, but agree with your two as well.
I had a strong reaction to over half of them, either positive or negative; the rest were “meh.” Two of them triggered my “that’s gross” reflex, and two of them made me laugh out loud: Lowboy and The Gum Thief.
favourite?
Is title part of cover design or is that in a entirely separate category? Strictly by design I would go with Moral Relativism and Who is Conrad Hirst?
Ken, interesting question, Title is part of marketing as is cover design… but I wonder if maybe the process would work better if the same team that was designing the cover was coming up with the concept for the title…
Gurr… favourite, favorite… tomato tomahto. I work in american english all day long, so I’ve kinda adapted. You should hear me say y’all.
Well, Sea of Poppies appeals to me for colour and design, although it might be less clever than some.
Also The Kiss, House of Sleep and Bodies caught my attention.
Love you my bi-grammarical nephew.