Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover

A cover is the first thing you see when you decide to get a book, whether it's a paperback, hardcover, ebook, audiobook, etc. The design of a cover can influence your decision to buy a book or not. People always say don't judge a book by its cover but it can be hard not to. Here's my top 5 things that make a good cover.

1. Nudity

If I want to buy a copy of a book I don’t want it to be a naked man and I want the cover to relate to the book. Especially when purchasing a physical copy of a book that can sway my thoughts on purchasing. For me, I'm ok with having these kinds of covers for e-books. Alternate covers are great options for this problem. I these covers can also plague if schools and libraries are going to purchase these books so having a cover that caters to everyone is very important.

2.Graphics

The most important thing is that a cover looks visually appealing and can catch the reader's attention. Things that factor into this is that the text is easily readable, especially the title. Also, if there's anything that's poorly photoshopped especially on cover models make sure you have other people look at the cover to get their opinions.

3. Black and White

Make sure the cover looks good in black and white. On most e-readers they are in black, white and gray e-ink to simulate the feeling of a real book. While looking at books on devices such as Kindle's you don't see the color so it's important that the cover looks good in color and in black and white. If it's hard to make out what the cover looks like then it could factor someone into not wanting to read that particular book.

4. Cohesiveness

This reason is more of a reason of preference. To me having a catalog or series look cohesive is very ideal. In a series when all the covers have a matching element it make you want to buy the entire series because they all match each other. Whereas, when they don't match you might not want to buy all of the books in that series. Also a small detail that I appreciate is when an author's name matches on all the covers they have released

5. Detail

The cover of a book is a reflection of the book in visuals so while reading you can connect different things to the cover. When having people on the cover it can help the reader envision what the characters look like. When the words of the story don't match the cover at that point it's a misleading cover and can give a sense of disappointment. This isn't something that you notice initially but it's still important

For me these are all things that I think about when purchasing a book. Like every elementary school librarian has said, it's not a good habit to judge books by their covers. You can't help it, it's human nature. Sometimes throwing all these reasons can be a good thing and you can find great books. It’s the first thing people will see when they look at a book so it's always important that it looks good.