Written by: Kathryn Fox
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Most of us were taught by our parents never to judge a book by its cover. It's what's inside that counts and appearances can be deceptive.
That is absolutely true for people, buildings and places, but couldn't be further from the truth for books.

You have to judge a book by its cover. Why? Because the cover, along with the title, have to tell you within a quick glance what sort of book it is. If the story is a thriller, the cover should be completely different from that of a romance, travel book or children's story.

The cover has to convey specific information and entice the reader or it hasn't done its job. In other words, summarize a 100,000 word novel in one picture or less. Make it intriguing, compelling but not ambiguous. Even more than that, make the cover so enticing that no reader can go past it, no matter where it sits in the bookshop. It has to stand out from the others. Unless, of course, the cover is meant to be a copycat and mimic work by another famous writer.

The black and grey covers of early Patricia Cornwell books, which I think were outstanding, defined a new genre. That of the forensic thriller. They also spawned a number of copycat styles. It was a while before colour came back into that particular genre.

What amazes me most about book covers is how differently countries represent the same story. In crime and thrillers, UK covers tend to be more graphic and scary, raised red-blood-spatters are big, whereas the Australian versions are more subtle and tend towards softer hues. American covers seem more mysterious, often depicting cities but tend to be in much brighter colours.

German, Italian, French all differ again. Why is that? Is it because readers in different countries have different expectations? Or are readers accustomed to seeing book covers a particular way? Just like cereals are packaged differently from country to country, so, too are books.

Occasionally covers can be misleading and cause problems for the author and the publisher, not to mention create annoyance in readers who were expecting something different. And what sells in one country may be completely ignored in another.

A cover can make or break a book, just as can allocating it to a specific genre. But that's another, longer story.
If anyone can think of examples of great versus not so great covers, I'd love to hear.

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