Booking Through Thursday this week is about book’s covers:

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?

As a designer, I have to say that covers are very important to me. The cover is part of the book — they create an interesting and exciting prospect in one entity. I like to see an attractive design, perhaps slightly abstract but not crazy-out-there-indistinguishable. Font is very important to me, again as a designer and editor. I like it to be attractive, have the right feel, style, and tone for the novel’s topic, genre, and title. When there is a book that has been made into a movie, I try not to buy the movie-poster cover, although sometimes it is unavoidable.

Hardcover vs. Paperback is an entirely different issue (already covered by me as part of Booking Through Thursday).

I usually dislike mass market paperback because they tend to be riddled with errors and often very uninspiring. I find the covers to be quick-n-dirty designs and not as creative as trade paperbacks. In fact, Nathan and David can attest to this as they recently had a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird delivered to their new flat (part of mail-order books offers). The only way to show my distaste is through the images:

You NEVER hyphenate a title… muchless on the COVER!!

Can you spot the 3 errors? They’re dead obvious if you actually read the text!

Did you catch them? How could something like this actually make it to print?

ETA: Well caught Danielle & Jessi! I was so pissed about the hyphenation on the cover, I didn’t even see “oversease”. I updated the images to reflect it!