I spend about 2hrs on the road everyday and have picked up a habit of listening to books. Over the past 4yrs, I have listened/read an average of 40 books a year.
I am a reader who reads purely for entertainment, so it’s mostly horror, crime, travel, thriller, sci fi genres.
So when I start searching for a new books, i usually depend on Goodreads and Google for recommendations. And there are so many reccos that I generally just chose a book which has a cover which sort of connects with me.
So while there are some initial level of filters and search words I use, the final selection is pretty much based on the cover. So I am literally just judging a book by it’s cover and reading.
Even among authors whom I like, I end up reading a bit of summary but summaries always sound good for most of the book. So I just see which one has the most intriguing cover.
How is everyone else tackling this ?
The old adage of “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is more usefully applied to the critique of literature than it is the consumption of it. The purpose of a cover is to draw attention to a book and to pique the curiosity of potential readers (and by extension potential buyers). It’s a marketing tool, so I think it’s perfectly natural for the cover to be considered in your reading and/or purchasing decisions.
But if you were to review a book on the merits of prose, characterization, or other internal factors, you would rightfully not be taken very seriously if your only frame of reference is how bland the cover is. In other words, it’s fine to judge a book by its cover when looking for something to read. It’s not fine to judge a book by its cover when attempting to make definitive statements about its actual qualities.