Judging a book by its cover
When encountered with a huge list of book covers, the natural instinct is to look for the most exciting book cover with the most exciting name. This is especially true when I am browsing through the shelves in my local book shop. First I filter based on names, then within those names, I filter using the covers. While buying books online, I can rely on reviews and go through the book entry on Goodreads which is not available in brick and mortar stores.
Even though it looks like a simple cover with an astronaut in the pic, it conveys a nice message that the book is about real men going to Mars and is set in the present. Most of the books based on Mars are in near future where we have terraformed and colonized Mars. Having a human in space suit symbolizes that it would contain challenges and at the time of writing the book, we have zero manned Mars landing.
The cover offers no significant information other than a small bang in the background. If a person has never heard the name of the book, the only way to decide would be via the name. If you know Richard Dawkins, then the cover is irrelevant.
Ben Goldacre is one of my favorite authors on medical science. The cover is not that useful unless your read the “Hacks, Quacks and uncomfortable facts” on the bottle. By the name you might be confused if the author is actually trying to vouch for bad science, especially if English is not your first language. The word “hacks” is quite subjective, which leads to the fact that the only word which helps us know it is about busting pseudoscience is the word “quacks”
Unless you know something about Isaac Asimov, the cover is close to useless. If you know about Isaac Asimov, the cover is close to useless.
The only thing you can figure from the cover is that it has to do with some science-y thing. That’s all.
I wish Neil deGrasse Tyson made sure that his books have better covers. The title is indeed bold and attractive with an artist impression of a black hole.
The cover doesn’t really help since you would end up taking the decision of reading this book by it’s name which contains “Death”. Don’t we all love books or movies with explosions and deaths?
Here is what we can figure out from the cover: Nothing.
Hugh Howey could not have cared less about the cover as most of the publicity of this book was done via word of mouth. Even before he published the omnibus edition, he had become immensely popular with the Kindle crowd by his self-published stories.
The name of the book doesn’t tell much about the book neither does the cover. The first thing to do is to know that the book is about post-apocalyptic world.
When you take this into consideration, then maybe the tents under dark starry sky makes sense. In such a world, there would be very little light pollution which would result in skies with more stars being visible.
The cover doesn’t contain many cues to tell the reader about the book. It does have “An oral history of the zombie war”, which explains something and the blood splashes convey that the stories might not be so rosy and we should brace for blood bathed settings.
I am really disappointed in Cory Doctorow. Atleast he could have made sure that the book contained something which sets the plot which is the Bay Bridge bombing and the torture of the common citizens held without charge.
The only information the cover provides is that the lead roles are played by people wearing teenager clothes, so they might actually be young people.
