There's that well known quote, we all know it, it says "don't judge a book by its cover" and I try, I really try not to judge it especially since more often than not the book proves to be way better than the cover. But at the same time I can't just ignore the cover, it is there for a reason, it was designed with a purpose, someone thought about it and made a decision, so I can't ignore it, but if I don't ignore it I can't help judging it. It's a mess.
The truth is a book cover, as I see it, is meant to make you want to pick up that book from the shelf, buy it and read it, then go for more. Some of the books I've read made me want to to the opposite, some of them I read with a "let's see how bad this is" mindset. Luckily, some proved to be amazing books that I enjoyed a lot.
Other books were exactly what I expected from the cover. The cover looked cheap, not thought about, some were downright repulsive to me, and the book was the same. I read some, rated them low, and some I gave up on entirely. There's just so much I can read before I feel like throwing the book into the sun.
The most annoying to me is when there are actual people on the cover. Even thinking about it, it evokes everything I feel when I see them. Most of them look like stock photos. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't like it when you can tell that a picture was randomly picked on a site and was not meant, not designed, for this particular book.
I also dislike it when the cover sets an expectation of what the character(s—depending on how many people there are on the cover) look like. It rubs me the wrong way when I start reading, get familiar with the characters and none of them look anything like the one(s) on the cover.
I have always thought books were meant to make you see the people inside the book as described. And I want that, I want to read the lines and envision the characters, imagine how they look like, shape their looks by how they are perceived in the book and not look at the cover to make an idea of them, idea that later proves to be nothing even near to how they are described.
If there can't be a person related to the book on the cover, if whoever decides on the cover can't comission someone to draw a character from the book (such covers are so great) I'd much rather have covers of plain fields, mountains, some other scenery relating to the story. Or an object, a machine, anything as long as it has some sort of connection to the book. If I go even more into it, I don't mind actual people on covers that much, I just don't want to see their faces. It feels fake and it's sometimes unsettling.
Lately I'm discovering all kinds of things I like and don't like in a novel. I've started reading more analytical, I guess, and I notice things that I didn't even think about before. One of such things is the cover, as for the rest I might or might not write about. For now I am glad I could ramble about the actual thing you first see when picking up a book.
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