Analysis: the cover is the most likely factor to convince a person to read a book if they are unfamiliar with the work or its author
As readers, we are often told not to judge a book by its cover. We have been led to believe that such judgements can cause us to miss out on really great books and indeed, this might be true. However, in an increasingly flooded book market, we're always going to miss out on great books so I’m here to tell you why you absolutely should judge a book by its cover.
Publishers put a lot of time and effort into creating book covers. This is because, in many instances, the book cover provides a reader’s first introduction to an author, often predating author interviews as the author needs to attain a level of success or notoriety before media outlets will consider featuring them. By signifying contents and genre, intelligent cover design may stimulate sales even when customers do not recognise the author. Indeed, according to research conducted by the Women's Prize for Fiction, the cover is the most likely factor to convince a person to read a book if they are unfamiliar with the work or its author.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's The Business, novelist Ella Griffin and book designer Graham Thew on the art of judging a book by its cover
Technological advances have added to the need for visual branding as the rise of online retail means that thumbnails of book covers need to be easily identifiable and visually appealing on laptops and phones. Furthermore, social media trends like #booktok and #bookstagram tend to prioritise books with attractive or unusual covers, thereby increasing word of mouth sales for commonly featured titles.
Therefore, not only is cover design more important than ever, but it also needs to be aesthetically pleasing through a variety of different mediums. Consequently, publishers invest significant resources into designing appropriate book covers to appeal to their chosen target demographics. This means that the colour of the cover, illustrations, typeface, the positioning of the title, and the design of the author’s name all have conative designations.
Readers are conditioned to associate styles of book covers with certain genres especially those genres which make up popular fiction. For example, crime novels often feature broken glass, blood, and potential crime scene detritus on monochromatic backgrounds whereas romance novels often feature cute illustrations of couples on a coloured background. These genre indicators help the reader to select books in a genre they enjoy reading.
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From TED, book designer Chip Kidd on the hilarious art of book design
However, book covers don’t just indicate genre and they contain dual levels of branding. The second level pertains to the authorial brand. Branding through cover design allows the customer to consistently identify the author with a particular visual style. These cover designs can represent genre whilst also branding the author. For example, Haruki Murakami's books are red, white and black, adopting sleek minimalist graphics which are often associated with literary fiction.
Publishers also release books with copycat covers which emulate successful authors’ cover style. This indicates that the publisher is trying to forge a link between multiple authors in readers’ minds. Think of how many books you have seen in recent years feature coloured blobs on the cover in the style of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half. Many of these novels are commercial women’s fiction books written by women of colour which cross the line into literary fiction. That’s a very specific category of writing to be inferred from some coloured swirls.
Another important hint that we find on the book cover is if it includes a blurb from a celebrity or author. For example, if the book is blurbed by Margaret Atwood, it is likely to contain feminist ideologies; if it is blurbed by Stephen King, then it is likely to contain horror.
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From Penguin Random House, designer Marianne Issa El-Khoury on what goes into the design of a book cover
It becomes interesting if we find authors from multiple genres blurbing the one book. For example, my copy of Kate Elizabeth Russell's My Dark Vanessa has quotes from crime author Gillian Flynn, popular fiction author Marian Keyes and the aforementioned horror writer King. This indicates that My Dark Vanessa exists at the intersection of these three genres. By paying attention to the range of authors featured on a book cover we can identify whether it could be our cup of tea.
Finally, the size and position of the author’s name can tell us if a publisher wants to push sales of a particular author’s work. According to French literary critic Gérard Genette, "the better known the author, the more space his name takes up". Nevertheless, Genette points out the size of the author’s name does not always correlate with success, as publishers sometimes try to associate emerging authors with existing brand name authors by adopting similarly large typefaces. Therefore, we can argue that publishers manipulate the placement of author’s names on book covers to condition audiences into associating certain authors with success, thereby encouraging potential readers to purchase other works by the same author.
If we take all of these individual elements and read them all together we can see that rather than hiding great books from us, judging a book by its cover helps us to find the type of books that we enjoy the most.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
