By Its Cover

The old adage says, "don't judge a book by its cover."  In actual fact, you can tell quite a bit by even a glimpse at the cover of a book.  Publishers put quite extensive resources into getting the cover right because people do, and should, consider the cover.

First of all, a cover can tell you whether a book is serious or not.  Even as fiction writers, we want people to know whether our work is deadly serious or light-hearted.  The cover is the first clue.

Book covers can also tell you if the publisher knows what they are doing or not.  Many self-published books are evident by their covers.  Others tell you that the publisher doesn't understand the intended readership.

Consider a book, fiction or non, that has an actual person's face on it.  Often this is not a strong selling point.  Some biographies do this, and that may be the one case where a good subject photo works for the cover.  A poor one, however, can put readers off.  I once bought a book of William McGonagall's poems.  McGonagall was an infamously bad poet, but his earnestness comes through nevertheless.  The publisher put a picture of Billy Connolly on the cover because he wrote the preface.  I almost didn't buy the book because of that cover.

I've seen books where the cover is clearly trying to be serious, but the results come off as cartoonish.  These books fail to convince readers that the writer knows what s/he is talking about.

No, it is not a good idea to judge a book just by its cover.  The saying, after all, is a metaphor about prejudice--don't judge something before you look into it.  Still, the literal rendering of the imperative is worth considering.  How many good books have been missed because of a mismatched cover?

My friend Steve has worked in non-fiction publishing for several years.  He has seen cover designs on books that both immediately torpedo the volume or, because of their evocative nature, likely guarantee sales.  I will confess that I have bought books because of the cover.

More than once.

I think of a book cover as the subtle label to the reader about what's inside.  A publisher who takes care with a cover does their author a service.  Other publishers, while producing good content, are burying their authors in obscurity by not judging a book by its cover.