Guilty as charged! (Ever judge a book by it's cover?)

Member Name: linut

Product:	Ever judge a book by it's cover?
Date:	27/04/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: screen through all those books

Disadvantages: it might take you longer to discover what may be a real gem of a book

A picture is worth a thousand words. And so why is it that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover?

One of the most popular debate topics during my school times was that of 'Does a person's appearance reflects his/her personality?' Try as we may to avoid unfounded assumptions and prejudices, the importance of first impressions can not be denied. A person who has an interview for a highly needed job will surely dress his best, as will someone trying to win over the person of their dreams, people working in certain fields dress to reflect their professionalism and so on. Without these attempts to give good first impressions, who knows how many opportunities will be missed.

In that respect, an author trying to sell his books should also consider this importance. There are trillions of books out there. An exceptional cover, one that catches the eye will surely increase its chances of becoming a bestseller.

I give you Exhibit A.

There are many a good books these days that are being adapted onto the silver screen (Is the movie as good as the book? There is another category for this topic right?), resulting in the re-release of the books with covers incorporating the movie stars or photos. I admit that I bought my copy of John Grisham's The Firm solely due to the fact that it had Tom Cruise on the cover. I have never heard of Grisham then but the fact that it turned out to be a great book was a plus. I would not have read the following Grisham books had I not encountered that copy of The Firm that day.

And so I'm sure that more copies of Alex Garland's The Beach has been sold with Leonardo's face on the cover, Joanne Harris' Chocolat with Johnny Depp on the front and probably more of Bridget Jones with Renee Zellweger as the title role (Oh yes, as suspected, I just saw the new cover on Amazon!). With the new Harry Potter movies on their way, the now so already popular childrens b
ook will surely receive a face lift as well.

Exhibit B.

The eye and therefore the mind are attracted to things that are pleasing and new. A beautiful albeit simple cover is more likely to be picked up than the others. There was a time when all the women's romance novels had to have pictures of bare torso-ed men with long, streaking hair and tight pants on its cover. If not that, pictures of sassy women or just their body parts will often do it! (Legs I think, was the most popular!)

I love what the revolution of contemporary women (and men) writers have done to change this. The likes of Jane Green, Marian Keyes, Mike Gayle, Lloyd & Rees has done wonders to the cover of books today. The above mentioned is now replaced with charming, cheeky and eye catching covers with pretty (well, I am a girl..we like pretty things) colours and all.

I bought Jane Green's Jemima J because I loved the simple yet pretty (OK OK..) cover. Ben Elton's Inconceivable is another one that caught my eye!

So there you have it. I know that judging a book by its cover is not good but in a world that is so fast paced, that you even need to find a few stolen moments to finish your books, we can say that judging by the cover acts like a screening process. And if a book is truly exceptional then it wouldn't matter what the cover looked like. If it was REALLY good then it would surely end up on our booklist anyhow, right?

(Oh..I don't buy solely by looking at the cover..I love classic books, they usually have very simple and plain covers.) But on the above charge of judging by the cover, I admit I am guilty but I don't think it is something that I would stop doing. It is the way of the world anyway...

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