Do you judge a book by its cover?

[Telcontar]

I agree that a good, attractive cover really can help a book. Gotta get noticed on that shelf, after all. I can remember three times that I impulse-bought a book based on little more than its cover (and here, the blurb on the back counts as part of the cover). I hadn't heard anything about the books or the authors.

I regret two of those buys. One book was boring and cliched, and the other was simple-minded and juvenile. I'll be doing more research from now on.

At least the third book turned out to be good.

 

[Donny Bruso]

While cover art is nice, it isn't how I ultimately judge the book. I read the blurb on the back or dust jacket, and if that is sufficiently interesting, I open the book to several random pages and read a few paragraphs. I avoid the first third of the book in doing so, because that is written to hook you. I try to stay about the middle and see if they can grab me during the usually slower paced portions of the book. If I'm interested after that, then I'll buy it. If not, back to the shelf with it until some other person with different taste wanders along.

 

[Argentum]

I do judge a book by it's cover. Most of the time you really can tell a lot by it's cover. Say, certain lower quality books, or mostly self published, I guess, have pretty bad quality covers that usually tend to mirror the quality of the writing. It's kinda hard to explain how I use book covers to decide what books are worth reading. It's a sort of technical process. I tend to avoid anything with very blatant, obvious, badly desguised CGI. I don't mean the covers with say weapons on them and swirly backgrounds. I mean the ones with characters on the front constructed of the lowest quality cgi available. In lots of cases, the book covers tend to match the quality of the author's writing. In some cases, the poor authors are unlucky and have the most ugly covers and the best writing. And lots of writers have book covers way too good for their quality of writing, but again, it's a technical way I judge my books. Or at least it was. Right now I have this tendency to grab everything off the shelf until my arms are full.

 

[Joe the Gnarled]

I once read where writer/publisher Sol Stein was involved in a study at a New York book store. They observed customers walking around shopping for books. In the end it was determined that customers would pick up books based on the cover (cover art, a catchy title, or an author that they like) and seldom would anyone make it past page four before deciding to either put the book down or purchase their selection.

I have bought several books for my wife based on the cover alone. 90% of the time they were books she enjoyed. As for myself I usually look at the cover and read the first paragraph. If I like that I will give the book a chance and read the first chapter or so and then decide whether or not to buy the book. I never read the blurb. I enjoy not knowing what is going to happen and the blurb gives too much away for me.