Judging a Book by its Cover

Posted on September 12, 2010 by vicbooks

And why the hell not.

Usually used as a cautionary moral, don’t judge a book by its cover, has always grated a little. For many years I harboured a secret guilt that I did just that, judging by veneer, only looking skin deep, ya-da ya-da blah. Then I saw an artist friend put an almost inhuman effort into choosing a frame for a painting she’d completed – when questioned her only justification was, ‘It has to fit’. I don’t see why the same shouldn’t apply to books.

There’s a striking irony that exists in cover art, that being that the best covers come out of the USA, a place known more for being a giant mall, where neither style nor substance win over marketing, while the worst covers come out of the UK, which has that deceptive air of continental artistry, where substance travels hand in hand with design. This, of course, has various exceptions, but as a general rule it tends to hold true, and unfortunately the commonwealth market follows the UK trend.

When, as a youf, I was a SF devotee, book covers were an integral part in the selection process, they revealed the genre of the book, its subtext and tendency. Many were awful, tacky images involving spaceships and weird aliens, all contained on a slightly metallic looking cover. But, then again, I was often after exactly that sort of book. Hard or literary SF usually had more complex covers, maintaining the futuristic signifiers while conveying the added dimension.

Read the rest, and see a range of covers, at vicbooks.