Don’t judge a book by its cover?

That’s of course nonsense. How the hell else am I going to decide what book to buy?

I passed a bookstore today and felt morally obligated to buy a book. Why? Because I remembered it was almost the end of ‘National Book Week’, a campaign to promote reading, books, and thus: bookstores. As someone who likes to read, I felt I had to go in and walk out with at least one book. The fact that if you buy a book this week, you get a free novel written especially for Book Week by a well-known author, is a nice bonus.

But how does one decide which book to buy? Exactly: you look at all the covers to see if anything pops out. You absolutely can judge a book by its cover.

Because the cover can tell you a lot. It can tell you the genre and if it’s fiction or non-fiction. If it’s for kids or for adults. Whether it’s serious or light reading. Who wrote the foreword and if it got any testimonials from believable people.

And of course, it tells you the title and the author — the key properties I judge a book on. A good title is important to grab the reader’s attention, just like with blogposts. The author may be even more important. A book with the same title but written by a more famous author is simply more appealing. And lastly, the cover will tell you the price! You need a price to know if you’re going to buy a book. So I walked around, scanning all the different covers.

At first I didn’t see any books I knew or wanted. But after spending some more time in the store and taking a better look, I spotted a book I liked. The title was really interesting and when I saw it was from a writer I admired I liked it even more. And the price was really low, so this was going to be my purchase.

As I walked around I spotted more interesting books. Why only buy one for myself, if I can also buy a book for my daughter and my niece and nephew? Book Week is about celebrating books, so I might as well go all out.

I walked out with not one but about eight books. Plus the free novel. I look forward to reading all the stories and I did my part supporting bookstores today.

Thanks to the covers. The book world owes a lot to the designers who created them. Because promoting books and reading doesn’t require just good stories or giving away free novels, it also needs design.