Desperately trying to arrange (yet another) bookshelf, I found myself fascinated by some of the book covers. A book cover affects the impulse of taking the book into your hand, turning it over to see what's on the back cover....or ignoring it and walking on. To buy or not to buy...
What covers do we like? What affects us most? Which covers are turn-offs and no-gos?
And what is your favorite book cover? And least favorite?

Well, the greatest book cover of all time has to be JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye....since he knew that people were affected by the book's cover, Catcher is always sold blank (except for 1 edition that had a drawing of the carousel on it)....

I'm not sure that I have a favorite....I do like when the cover accurately represents the book that's inside....Terror by Dan Simmons and the covers of all of George R R Martins instantly come to mind. I also like the penguin editions of Kerouac

I like a book cover that is intriguing, not too flashy, something subtle and unique. A cover that has flavour.

My least favorite are shiny covers.

I also prefer matt covers to shiny ones... Although I don't know why.

I think it's kind of sad, that we (naturally) decide intuitively for books with 'nicer' covers. That's probably just a human trait, we can't do anythink against because it's our nature to judge something 'at first sight'.
But neither does a good cover make a good book, nor does a bad cover make a bad book. But I think the sales figures of books are strongly influenced by its covers. And that automatically means that better promoted books get the 'better' cover and therefore are selled better because the well educated 'cover-makers' know this.
Because of that I always try to ignore the cover as long as the content of a book really interests me. Of course, that's not always possible as we all are only human and so it's really important to be aware of the fact that our first impression influences us quite strongly.

I'm thinking that it's primarily fiction, maybe poetry, that offers the publisher most leeway in cover design. With nonfiction it seems to be mostly a simple matter of font and color, and I don't seem very influenced by the choice. But with fiction, art may play a part. I might be most drawn in by an intriguing, non-representational design.

Book covers reminds me of a favorite joke I had going with my father. He was a voracious reader of what might be snobbishly called sub-fiction. Many of his hundreds of paperbacks featured men and women in various stages of passionate undress. When I would remark about the hot covers to him, he would say, "Oh, that's just to sell books. It's a character study." So whenever I saw him absorbed in another Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susanne, I'd say, "How's the character study going, Dad?"

I like simple book covers, the ones that are blank with just the title and author on them or they just have a single picture on them.

I typically know what I'm going to buy before I buy it. It's rare for me to just rummage around and buy on impulse. So I guess the book cover doesn't matter much to me.

As someone who has had to get book covers made, all these remarks are awesome.

When I have a cover made I personally like to find something that matches a scene from the book it is going onto. I believe this adds a glimpse of the authors vision to a book.

I know, as weird as that may sound.

I don't like books that are cheesy looking. Like really fancy font, or a buff shirtless guy, or a busty woman. I'd feel really weird reading that.



I prefer covers that are simple, with little design. They just let the book speak for itself. But as a whole, no, the cover's not that big a deal, but I do appreciate books with a cool cover.

My mother was an avid reader, and book collector. She would go to many used book stores, and other wholesale dealers and buy books without covers. If she knew it was a good book, she would buy it and read it regardless if it had a cover or not. I have since inheirited many of these books, and I also find that a cover is meaningless to what is written inside.