Why You Should Always (Usually) Judge a Book by its Cover

We've all heard the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover." It really means that you shouldn't judge people by the way they look, which is (usually) good advice; however, the actual advice is pretty bad, because it turns out, you can and should judge books by their covers. How else would you choose which book to read? The cover, front and back, gives you the three most important pieces of information you need when choosing a book: the author, what kind of book it is, and, courtesy of the back-cover blurb, what the book is about. 

But even just the illustration usually provides a pretty clear synopsis of the tone and style you can expect. If it's a politician standing in front of a flag, you can guess it's going to be a dry political biography (or autobiography or manifesto). If it's a politician's head photoshopped onto a body pooping on a toilet, you can make the fairly safe guess that it's political satire. If the picture depicts a wild-haired maiden astride a dragon, or any kind of map with names you don't recognize, or any group of people holding swords and looking grim, it's a fantasy. If it's a well-muscled man embracing a long-haired woman with partially ripped clothing, it's a fantasy of a different kind. I usually choose books with all lower-case font, amusing or quirky titles, graphically rendered tree branches, and, most importantly, a matte finish. Shiny paperbacks printed after 2000 are never any good, and you can tell the publishers thought so too, because they printed them cheap 'n nasty.

Here are a few examples of book covers which I think say quite a lot about the books they cover--certainly enough to decide whether or not it's worth reading them.

This one looks like an action novel, intense and full of guys talking tough. Also, based on the font they chose for the author's name, I'd guess that the story either involves a detective or a reporter, or it's a self-published book.

 Clearly a deep, philosophical book dealing with life's great questions. For instance, how did the heroine get her eyebrows waxed in the 1800s, and what exactly is that naked man doing to the poor woman's cleavage?

A collection of cartoons. We can tell, because it's a cartoon, and the book is named "Gallery 3."

Easily identifiable as the Chick-Lit persuasion of general fiction. Guaranteed to thread warm red ribbons of warmth through your heart. Also? They have kindly written "A New York Times Bestseller" across the top of the cover, so you know that other people don't hate it. 

Exactly the kind of cover I look for. Now if only all the letters were lower case... although all upper case works, too, in that chalk font. 

Now, the exception to this rule, in my opinion, is old books--let's say, anything printed before 1990. I'm sure there were lots of great things back then, but book covers were not among them. Let's face it: things were just plain ugly. Take, say, The Great Gatsby (my copy of which looks like this):

You can't look at that and get a real sense of what the book's about.   I would never willingly read that book. In fact, in high school, I actively and ferociously hated that cover, and I transferred that feeling onto the book itself (sorry, Fitzgerald!). You may have had a similar experience. Now imagine encountering the same text, in this edition, with this cover:

Totally different vibe, right? Totally different feeling about the book from the get-go.

I firmly believe that not only do covers tell you a lot about the book inside, but they actually influence how you feel about the book. Am I wrong? Possibly, but I'll leave you with this: I have frequently forced myself to read books with covers I hated, and the only one I ever liked was Jane Eyre (which I promptly bought a better, less-ugly version of). The rest turned out to be pretty much as awful as their covers promised.

EDIT: I recently saw this FABULOUS TedTalk by book designer Chip Kidd, and I thought it definitely needed to be added to this post! He is hilarious and a graphic design genius, and he talks about all the work he and people like him put in to making sure that you can get a sense of the story from the cover.

So judge away, dear readers. That's what covers are for.