Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Judge THIS, bitches.

I was serving a customer the other day, who was asking me about some reading recommendations, and as we were walking through the sci-fi section, with me pointing out different things that I liked, he picked up something and asked me what I thought of it.

Me: Well, to be honest, I've never read it. The cover looks kind of boring, so I've just never bothered.
Him: Oh, well, you can't judge a book by its cover, you know.
Me (internally): I hate you so much.

You know what? Fuck that. In a bookstore with over 200,000 titles, SOMETHING needs to draw you in straight away, you know? And if the publisher can't give enough of a shit to whack an exciting, or at the very least, intriguing cover on something, why the hell should I give it a chance?
And you know what? Judging books by their cover has worked fairly well for me so far. Look at these three books- each ones now classed amongst my favourite books, each one picked up solely due to the striking cover images.

So thank you very much, mister customer, but you CAN judge a book by it's cover, contrary to popular belief, and I shall continue to do so for the forseeable future. So there.

1 comment:

Suzanne said...

Feel free to judge. Here's why.

Publishing company puts X amount of money down for publicity, graphics, etc. Which is why a Harry Potter book always looks better than a Storm Constantine one. (not heard of her? Thats why.)So if I look at a book, and the publishing house has so little faith in it that they haven't invested in a decent cover, then I'm not overly eager either.

That said, one of my favorite books ever (Obernewtyn) was released with a crap cover. Then it made money, so they re-released with an awesome cover. So theoretically, if you go for a decent cover, you're getting a book that is expected to, or has already performed.