Judging A Book By Its Cover

The old saying goes "don’t judge a book by its cover". Whilst this has come to mean a lot more in today’s society metaphorically than literally, we still use the statement in reference to books too. Many people swear by this adage, but obviously not everyone - why else would book covers be so important in garnering public attention?

Judging a book by its cover has actually become an increasingly popular way of choosing which one to read. If you walk into any major bookstore you’ll see shelf after shelf of new-releases and best-sellers at the front of the shop which are all displayed front-on to emphasise their carefully designed covers. Clearly in the fast paced world that we now live it isn’t always practical to deliberate at length over a book to read and an interesting cover seems to help us decide on whether we may like a book.

Of course, this really has very little to do with the content of the book. The vast majority of the time the book’s author doesn’t even have a part to play in the design of their book’s cover. This is a task left to the publisher’s media-machine which strives to generate the maximum amount of sales. A book’s cover may have almost nothing to do with the content and yet still draw your attention and curry your intrigue.

Those with sense would probably pick books on recommendation or at least based upon reviews rather than blindly picking a book based on its cover. However, many will still find themselves helplessly drawn to enticing illustrations adorning the covers of all manner of books, and this is unlikely to change.

Whilst a book’s cover perhaps shouldn’t be the basis for your judgement of it, can it still be valuable in terms of informing your enjoyment of the work? Should the cover be treated as completely extraneous to the novel itself, or is it permissible to add to your reading of the work what you have taken from its cover?

There really is no simple answer to this question, and really no right or wrong either. Purists would likely claim that images should be ignored and only the linguistic content taken into account, but many others will see value in our impressions of the cover as well as the literary work within.

It may seem as though judging a book by its cover is an unwise thing to do, but can it really be helped? A book’s appearance is the first impression we will have of it, and the marketing people know this very well. There’s no use expecting this sales approach to change and as a result it would seem that we cannot help but take stock of a book’s cover before we read it.