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bjones6416 · 07-19-2010, 08:24 PM

This thread is fascinating to me, since I'm looking at it as a reader and not as a writer.

I admit, when I was reading p-books, the cover was almost always what drew me in. A good example of that is the Janet Evanovich series -- you can almost always just scan a shelf and pick out her books because the colors and graphics pop, and all the books in the series have a similar cover/layout. When I was trying to finish up reading the series, I used to go to the thrift store and just let my eyes drift over the shelves until I saw one of those distinctive colors. But then again, would my buying books from a thrift store actually help an author in any way? Hmmm.

Since I started buying e-books, though, the cover is rarely any part of my decision to buy a book. More often I'll buy a book based on someone's recommendation here, or I'll scan the bestseller lists and read a few reviews on Amazon. I'm pretty sure I would have never bought any of the Bujold books based on the cover art. Same with the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs -- the covers don't reflect my interpretation of the books, but I read them based on some reviews from here and loved them.

I'll hedge a little bit here and say that maybe on occasion a cover on an e-book will draw me in, but on the other hand a bad cover won't keep me from reading something that I'm interested in reading. After all, with an e-book you never even have to see the cover if you don't want to, and when you're reading in public nobody else sees it either.

Interesting topic.

07-19-2010, 08:24 PM	#42
bjones6416 ↓↓ Skirt!! Earrings!! Posts: 3,394 Karma: 17432172 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Georgia, USA Device: Acer netbook, JetBook Lite, Sony PRS-300, Kindle 2, Kindle Fire	This thread is fascinating to me, since I'm looking at it as a reader and not as a writer. I admit, when I was reading p-books, the cover was almost always what drew me in. A good example of that is the Janet Evanovich series -- you can almost always just scan a shelf and pick out her books because the colors and graphics pop, and all the books in the series have a similar cover/layout. When I was trying to finish up reading the series, I used to go to the thrift store and just let my eyes drift over the shelves until I saw one of those distinctive colors. But then again, would my buying books from a thrift store actually help an author in any way? Hmmm. Since I started buying e-books, though, the cover is rarely any part of my decision to buy a book. More often I'll buy a book based on someone's recommendation here, or I'll scan the bestseller lists and read a few reviews on Amazon. I'm pretty sure I would have never bought any of the Bujold books based on the cover art. Same with the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs -- the covers don't reflect my interpretation of the books, but I read them based on some reviews from here and loved them. I'll hedge a little bit here and say that maybe on occasion a cover on an e-book will draw me in, but on the other hand a bad cover won't keep me from reading something that I'm interested in reading. After all, with an e-book you never even have to see the cover if you don't want to, and when you're reading in public nobody else sees it either. Interesting topic.