Can you judge a book by its cover?

A better question: do you ever buy books because of (or despite) their cover?

Author photo

There are other subtitles we could use here:

Maybe, maybe not, but it might affect your reading
Bullshit! You totally can.
Poppycocks! Covers, schmovers!

It used to be an old cliché that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s no longer the case.

Obviously, you can judge what a book is most likely about, or get an idea of its genre from the cover. The question is, does the cover have an impact the quality of the book itself?

Think about your preferred genre: erotica, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult, literary fiction, historical fiction, classic literature, politics, self-help, postmodern, philosophy…If you buy a cheesy looking airport bookshop fat paperback with two lovers embracing, and the title - Taste Me, Caress Me, Ravish Me Mon Amour! - is written in melodramatic cursive, you certainly aren’t getting a book on the history of the French Revolution. (If you are, that’s a questionable cover design)

For the classics, does the cover matter? After all, Charles Dickens is Charles Dickens, no matter the cover.

Some questions

• Are you happy to read e-books?

• Does reading an e-book change the reading experience?

• Would you buy the e-book if it were significantly cheaper even though you love the cover of the paperback?

• Do you ever buy books solely because the cover is so great?

• Do bad covers put you off buying a book, or will you still buy a book despite its cover?

• Besides the cover, what about the font? Does that matter to you?

• What about translations? How does that change the equation?

Let me answer these questions now.

• Yes, I’m happy to read e-books, even if I am a Luddite and prefer old-fashioned newspapers. I think e-books are a wonderful creation and let’s not forget that you can read more than just books on an e-reader (for example, I use Instapaper to send web articles directly to my Kindle). They’re wonderfully convenient in many ways.

• Yes, an e-book does change the reading experience. Though I read much more non-fiction than fiction, I find reading fiction on an e-book less enjoyable. I recently spent a few days in Trieste, and I had four Trieste-themed books with me, one of them being Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo. I had made two previous attempts to read this on my Kindle with free samples years ago and I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was the stream-of-consciousness, rambling style, but it just wasn’t grabbing me. I think sometimes reading an e-book is similar to watching films on airplanes. Unless it’s the right type of film (no big action-adventure blockbusters with special effects), it can be a lousy experience. And sometimes, the timing of when you read a certain book has to be right.

Even though I might be contradicting a previous post about life being too short to put up with bad books, I gave this one a third shot. It’s considered one of the quintessential Triestine novels and told myself I just had to read it. And as they say, third time’s a charm, or maybe it was just having the physical copy in my hands, but it was magical on this attempt.

• Would I buy the e-book if it were significantly cheaper? Tough call. For non-fiction, probably. But if I think I’m going to read the book multiple times, then I want the paperback.

Price is definitely a concern – if there’s an e-book on my reading list and it’s suddenly $5 and the paperback is $15 (plus shipping) well…it’s hard to not buy the e-version. But it’s equally hard to pass up on a wonderful cover with beautiful font, especially from the New York Review of Books (NYRB) Series. They’re stunning, as you’ll soon see.

I’ve read plenty of fiction on my Kindle that I’ve enjoyed and I’ve read plenty of fiction in hard copy that I didn’t like. The same goes for non-fiction. In the end, I have no idea whether it matters what version you have.

One other key point, concerning non-fiction – if, like me, you highlight and/or take a lot of notes when you’re reading, than an e-book is a godsend. I can recall all of my notes and highlights dating back to the early 2010s when I got my first e-reader. And now, with most of my physical books in Kyiv, there’s no way of accessing all of my notes and even so, it’s not exactly the most convenient thing in the world to lug around hundreds of books wherever you go. If I think it’s a book that I’m going to highlight a lot, then I’ll opt for the e-book. Having all of those notes in one tidy place is a huge bonus.

• The font (of the text, not the cover) does matter and plays a big factor, absolutely.

• As does whether it’s translated or not. Some of the great classics translated into English might have up to five or six different translations and there are endless discussions amongst literary nerds as to which translations are the best. Reading The Master and Margarita in different translations was like reading quite different books. The same applies to Madame Bovary. I haven’t read Marcel Proust, but there is heated debate over the best translations of his magnum opus – people can’t even agree on the translation of the title. Is it In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past?

For Zeno’s Conscience, I didn’t even order the nicest-looking paperback, because I wanted the one translated from the Italian by William Weaver, who has translated a number of Italian classics (most significantly, Italo Calvino). So, yes, the translator is another important consideration (and speaking of disagreeing over titles: another translator opted for Confessions of Zeno).

• And finally, do you buy books solely because of the cover?

I have had a lot of trouble with my cover – it has gone on for ages, I’ve pestered people for feedback, and the reviews have been mixed. I am now on my third and what I hoped to be final cover (you’ll get a sneak peek of it below), but…there’s still some uncertainty. I’m ridiculously indecisive in general (as if you couldn’t have guessed) but when you see the range of covers I love, you might get a better idea of why I’ve been second-guessing things so much.

Here are some of my favourite covers, some from books I’ve read, some I haven’t.

COOL COVERS

Hell yeah, I’m buying this – how can I not? I’d never buy a book just because of its cover if it were in a genre I’m not interested in, but this one ticks all the right boxes.

That’s a new book, to be released on paperback in the autumn.

Many other books with classic covers have multiple editions and the older covers can be harder to find.

I have not read this, but the first time I saw this was in 2007 in a bookshop in San Sebastian, and I regret not buying it:

I can’t recall at the time whether I’d read any Nabokov at that point – I can say now that I didn’t like Lolita but I did enjoy Pnin, so it’s a wash.

That edition has proven difficult to locate. But the updated one isn’t bad either, and the title itself also has something to do with its appeal. It’s intriguing, to say the least:

I had never read Anthony Burgess (best known for A Clockwork Orange) until I came across this:

It’s a pretty thick book, and the timing was right – I was short of reading material while living in Nigeria and so I grabbed this and it was an absolute treat. I’ve read it three times now and it got me hooked on Burgess. But sadly, I don’t know what happened to this version and newer editions don’t match up.

Another classic, and perhaps my favourite piece of fiction:

This is another older edition, no longer in print, and the updates I’ve seen have been okay(ish). But nothing beats this one (and it’s not a bad quality image, it’s meant to be blurry).

Here’s a book that I wasn’t sure I wanted to read, it’s another in the line of philosophical stream-of-consciousness rambling existentialist novels I tend to go for with mixed feelings, but I was sold on the cover (and again, the title):

It turned out to be a pretty good book. Not one of my favourites, but worth reading.

In my cover research I chanced upon this, which I’d never heard of. Not even knowing what it’s about, from the title, font and image, I decided I wanted to read it.

And then I read the book description, and it confirmed my desire to read it. It sounds intriguing and once again, I’m a bit jealous – I wouldn’t mind something like this for my cover. Strangely, for me anyway, this is an older version and it has since been updated (it’s not even an old book, first published in 2021), and the only way to get this cover is to buy it used.

Complicating matters further, and I know these are first-world problems and English readers are spoilt for choice, but sometimes the UK edition is vastly different from the US - compare these versions of Age of Empire. The US edition:

And the UK, which is far superior in my opinion (the font is nicer too):

I don’t want to overload this post with images, so if you’d like to see two more examples of differences in covers between the UK and US editions, have a look at Why Does the World Exist? (Jim Holt) and The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking (Olivia Laing). You can be the judge of which you prefer.

My final cover comes from another of my favourites, and it’s a book I’ve given to a few people over the years as a gift, not just because of the cover, which as a bonus is taken from Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel, one of my favourite painters. This is from the NYRB series, and most of their covers are a delight. I sometimes just scroll through their vast catalogue and think about the books I would love to have (let’s not forget an obvious overlooked point - it’s nice to have books lining your bookshelf):

Here’s the link if you’d like to browse the collection:

NYRB Series

If you’re curious, these are the ones in particular I like the most. Some I’ve read, most I haven’t. Their plot descriptions also sound intriguing, so it’s like combining the beauty of the cover and the beauty of the prose.

The Old Man and Me, Elaine Dundy
Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman
Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte
During the Reign of the Queen of Persia, Joan Chase
The Glory of the Empire, Jean d'Ormesson
As a Man Grows Older, Italo Svevo
Tyrant Banderas, Ramon del Valle-Inclán
Marshlands, André Gide
In a Lonely Place, Dorothy B. Hughes
Black Wings Has My Angel, Elliott Chaze
In the Café of Lost Youth, Patrick Modiano
Grand Hotel, Vicki Baum

And finally, a very sneak peek at my current and perhaps final cover…we shall see…

Photo Credit: Emilie Puzzo

All other book images are either from Amazon or Google images.

If you have any thoughts on covers or examples of your favourites (or least favourites), please share below.