‘They’ always said you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – but ‘they’ probably never took into account a site like http://www.judgeby.com. This new site allows you to literally judge a book by the design of its cover, and compare your rating with the actual Amazon rating. It’s surprisingly difficult – I found that most of my ratings were lower than the actual Amazon ratings.
What this tells me is that there are a lot of great books out there with sub-par cover designs. Of course they can get the ratings once people have picked up the book…but what if the design doesn’t entice someone to make the purchase in the first place? I’m almost certain this is happening in many cases – I admit, I often buy books because they LOOK interesting. I’m no anthropologist, but I’ll bet many others do the same thing.
Check it out for yourself – you’ll be surprised at how many five-star books have two-star cover designs.
Via Swissmiss.
Garret Ohm
http://www.orange-element.com
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Book stores are one of my favorite places to visit. I’m like a kid in a candy store at the B&N at the Inner Harbor. I’ve often thought that the appearance of a book – colors, font size and style, etc. – plays a huge role in its popularity. Specifically, the spine of a book must be enticing enough to first get noticed, then induce the reader to pick it up off the shelf. From there the copy can do the rest of the work because, at that point, the reader just wants to know what the book is about.
Very interesting post.
-C
I must admit I am a total book cover judger! I don’t go the library because I love new books, (I mean really, who wants to return a beautiful book when they’re done with it?) and whilst shopping for such new books the cover is very important. I might not even read the back if the cover is whack. The only way around my cover judging is if I’ve been given a recommendation, then I will overlook a terrible cover.