Judging a Book By Its Cover

Mostly I'm all for old quotations. Lots of wisdom to be had there. The old adage 'Never Judge a Book By It's Cover' is something that's close to my heart. I always remember it when I form opinions... especially about people. Although it applies to cars and software and graphic novels too.

Who would have known that the fancy-pants Fiat Punto runs a trashy engine half a decade older than the humble Maruti Swift? But there's still one field where I find that I just can't agree with that old saying.


That's when I'm trying to judge...


...er...
... well...

Books.







These are all good books.

Can you recognize a common thread to them all? No? Yes? I assume no.

Maybe it'll help to have some comparative pictures of great and not so great books from the same author :)





Good. ...................................................Meh.



Like reading an awesome action movie.





Like reading a B-grade
action sequel.




I think most of you would have gotten the very simple distinction between the covers of the good books and the not so good books. That's right... the good books place the emphasis on the name of the book, the bad ones place emphasis on the name of the author.

Somehow I never liked reading authors names in large characters. I didn't put my finger on 'why?' until much later. Having your name in massive characters is an ego exercise, and takes away from the work itself. If the work is good enough to stand on its own, it does not need the crutch of it's author. On the other hand... if the work is weak, the author, the publisher is insecure, he tries to bank on past glory... either that or he has the ego the size of a mountainside.


Is it too ridiculous a thing to base your entire understanding of book selection on?


Maybe.


I've followed this simple algorithm for years, and with ridiculously high levels of success in detecting trash.
Sometimes I look for good art too, as an indicator that the publisher has confidence in the book- but this isn't nearly as trustworthy a mechanism as the first one.


Judgemental? Hell yes.
Accurate-? Oh yes, about 80+% accurate.

There are some grave miscalculations, of course- Endymion Spring made me want to puke while reading it, but I liked the cover when I saw it.


Of course, many books have several different covers, experimenting with both styles of presentation... but eventually the 'equilibrium' shifts in the direction of one or the other experiencing better sales- so the company moves into mass producing the more successful cover... and you will find... perhaps in the four most common covers for a good book, that the name of the book takes prime position in three out of four, and just the opposite for a bad one.


Sometimes good and bad books are released in a 'series' so they need to have the same cover styles... Newer authors are less likely to have planet sized names on the cover...

Er, maybe I'm writing too much. I don't really think too much when picking up a book.

I guess I can't resist the irony of the fact that I always DO end up judging a book by its cover.

And It's pretty damn effective.