I can admire the cover art and hate the book or vice versa. In the end though, the cover art means nothing to me. I judge a book by it’s content only.

Not at all. I don’t really look for a particular author nor do I really care if I’m picking up a new one or reading the same. The cover only grabs my attention to the book and makes me want to pick it up. I’ll read the synopsis and decide from there. Don’t even bother looking at the author. That’s how I ended up with a library full of various authors and genres. I just go with my gut.

Honestly, the only thing I want in covers (especially fantasy) is less black/gray/white.

Easier for me to identify books I do not want to read by their covers. Anything with vector illustrated people is a pass. Or anything where the authors name takes up 50% of the cover.

First of all: What I’m about to say is my personal approach, and not that my personal approach is a very good one 💀

For me, it absolutely depends on the cover whether I pick up a book and read what it is actually about. Whether I’m in the library, in the book store or on Goodreads. However, if I see a book I haven’t read before a lot (as in: I see many people talk about it), I’ll take an interest in it as well (e.g. I haven’t ever heard of Cloud Cuckoo Land, I notice it twice on Goodreads, I see it mentioned on Reddit, I go to the library and am surprised that it’s right on display, I pick it up and it sounds interesting, I read it). But for that to happen, I need to notice the cover often enough to remember it as well. I usually forget book titles when there’s no picture, like here on reddit, when I don’t look them up specifically and have no matching picture. When that happens, I go more by popularity than personal book cover preferences… However, I do have preferences and book covers that will absolutely NOT make me read the book. If I look at my Read and TBR shelf e.g. There’s “Violeta”, “A Master of Djinn”, “Legendborn”, “A Far Wilder Magic”, “If You Could See The Sun” but also such as “Woman, Eating”: I love illustrated covers so, so much! Both digital art and classical paintings ❤️ If I like the book I will absolutely want to buy it, even if the pretty cover is more expensive! Then there’s books with a more modern and clean look like “The Atlas Six”, “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” (which fits both categories), “The Setting Sun”: very pretty in my opinion but mostly in person and not that special when you see them on the screen. Irl I’ll notice them a lot and will pick them up and probably buy!

Book covers that will make me hesitate before I pick them up: classical romance covers (like “The Love Hypothesis”) and thriller covers (like “Behind Closed Doors”). Also, it’s very unlikely that I’m going to buy such a book, even if I enjoyed it a lot. Books that I will not pick up at all: any real life person on the cover, unless it’s like a zoomed in eye or lips or such. If it’s a shirtless dude, a woman with a big gown or a whole very touchy couple, I won’t read it no matter what it is.

First of all: What I’m about to say is my personal approach, and not that my personal approach is a very good one 💀

For me, it absolutely depends on the cover whether I pick up a book and read what it is actually about. Whether I’m in the library, in the book store or on Goodreads. However, if I see a book I haven’t read before a lot (as in: I see many people talk about it), I’ll take an interest in it as well (e.g. I haven’t ever heard of Cloud Cuckoo Land, I notice it twice on Goodreads, I see it mentioned on Reddit, I go to the library and am surprised that it’s right on display, I pick it up and it sounds interesting, I read it).But for that to happen, I need to notice the cover often enough to remember it as well. I usually forget book titles when there’s no picture, like here on reddit, when I don’t look them up specifically and have no matching picture. When that happens, I go more by popularity than personal book cover preferences…

However, I do have preferences and book covers that will absolutely NOT make me read the book. If I look at my Read and TBR shelf e.g. There’s “Violeta”, “A Master of Djinn”, “Legendborn”, “A Far Wilder Magic”, “If You Could See The Sun” but also such as “Woman, Eating”: I love illustrated covers so, so much! Both digital art and classical paintings ❤️If I like the book I will absolutely want to buy it, even if the pretty cover is more expensive!

Then there’s books with a more modern and clean look like “The Atlas Six”, “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” (which fits both categories), “The Setting Sun”: very pretty in my opinion but mostly in person and not that special when you see them on the screen. Irl I’ll notice them a lot and will pick them up and probably buy!

Book covers that will make me hesitate before I pick them up: classical romance covers (like “The Love Hypothesis”) and thriller covers (like “Behind Closed Doors”). Also, it’s very unlikely that I’m going to buy such a book, even if I enjoyed it a lot.

Books that I will not pick up at all: any real life person on the cover, unless it’s like a zoomed in eye or lips or such. If it’s a shirtless dude, a woman with a big gown or a whole very touchy couple, I won’t read it no matter what it is.

Most what I read I don’t find from casually browsing so I don’t think covers are the end all be all, but when I’m browsing at a book store I approach it pretty much like you do. In the store I think covers are fairly important. Color is definitely the biggest draw, especially since books are often displayed by their spine. Vibrant colors or at least the stark contrast of darker colors with bright accents. After that I’m really looking for something with style. The biggest turn off is realistic depictions of the characters or scenes from the book because they’re honestly just boring. Characters, places, and scenes can work if they are stylized but otherwise they’re not that engaging. Personally I like symbolism and more thematic covers, and I enjoy seeing the iterations across a series.

I think my favorite books/covers I picked up while browsing because of their covers are The Spear that Cuts Through Water, Priory of the Orange Tree, Scythe, and The Blacktongue Thief.

It rarely affects me positively but it can make me put the book right back on the shelf. Every once in a while, especially with horror, it will really catch my eye (Starve Acre by Andrew Hurley is a good example), but mostly I look at the reviews on the back (looking for Kirkus, Booklist etc rather than just people) and glance at the blurb to make my decision.

Well, i like covers that jump out. Which is really hard to do.

Shane Jones‘ Light Boxes. That was a lovely impulse buy, and I still love the cover art, which stopped me dead in my tracks.

Comic Book Covers, but only certain artists.

Kaare Andrews run on the Incredible Hulk.
James Jean on Fables.
The Filth, with Segurá Inc.

off the top of my head.

When you stop to appreciate it, and then pick it up, it’s not only done it’s job, you’re more likely to buy it.

Quite a bit. There’s a reason why people say first impressions matter.

There are millions of books out there. The spine & cover is the first chance for a particular book to stand out among the rest. If the publisher/author doesn’t believe in the book enough to make sure it has an eye-catching cover, why should I care enough to give it a chance?

Say I’m interested in a horror novel. A cover like this is far more likely to catch my attention than something like this.

The former is a work of art that tells a story in itself while giving you clues as to what happens in the book. Meanwhile, the latter is boring, generic, and doesn’t tell you anything beyond what the words say.

My money, and more importantly, my time is limited. I’m going to go with books where effort & time was put into grabbing my attention.

A lot. I’m a judge the book by the cover person. A good cover will draw me in immediately.

The thing about browsing in a bookstore (or a library) is that you can’t actually see the cover unless it is on display. Most of the books I can only see the spine. So I guess I judge the book by the spine, or maybe the title? And when I have them home on my shelf, I am only seeing the spine so cover doesn’t really matter for most genres.

In romance, however, the cover is (was?) a way to determine what kind of romance book one could expect. For example, cartoon covers or bright colors with a single object indicate something different than the clinch covers, shirtless man covers, dark covers, covers with swords and raised lettering, etc. Then someone got involved and started putting cartoon covers on many types of ‘romance’ books which means I likely avoid books I would have liked because of the cover.

I don’t care about the cover but any self help book author who includes “fuck” or “f*ck” in the title of their book is a hard no for me.

Amazon Prime has a book with a shapely woman in black leather on the cover. After scrolling past it 100 times looking for interesting titles, I pushed it to my Kindle. There it sat for a year+ with that shapely woman in black leather taunting me in the Uncollected folder. Eventually, I channeled my inner 14 year old and read it. It wasn’t awful so I read the next one in the series. The series dead-ended so I tried another series by the author but abandoned it fairly quickly.

It’s not how I normally choose books but the Kate Beckinsale Underworld outfit with more exaggerated curves sucked me in.

A lot .I can’t buy any book with real people on front, e.g, dark romance ones or TV shows tie ins.