I got thinking about this after a discussion over at
Hannah Mariska's blog, where the big question was asked - do you (and should you) judge a book by it's cover? The answer is, of course, yes. The reason cover's exist is to give the potential reader and enticing taster of the novel within, so judgements need to be made. This can't be avoided. (NOTE: It's insanely difficult to get any photos of fantasy book spines, so you'll have to make do with the covers, hehe).
That being said, if you're perusing your local library or bookstore, you won't get much chance to see the covers of many of the books since they're all tucked away in neat little rows. Only the highlighted and recommended books are displayed facing the front to show you the cover in all its glory. In the nanoseconds it takes for us to process all of the books before us before making a decision on which one to pick up and look at first, what draws our eye and makes that decision for us. The spine design (that last line was kind of poetic; consider that my weekly quote of culture filled).
I might be the only one here, but my initial judgements are made based on the book spine. There's a few things that usually catch my eye when scanning the shelves that will grab my attention:
- Author/Title - these are obviously no brainers, and necessary for the book spine, but there needs to be a balance. A well established author (e.g. George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan) with a host of best sellers under their belt will need their name to be printed larger and in a much bolder fashion than the title, since I'm more likely to recognise it. A lesser known author may rely on a really catchy title, since at this stage in the game they're selling their story, not themselves.
Artwork - this can be both a blessing and a curse. I've seen books where the cover art of a book is simply repeated on the spine in minuscule format. If I have to get nose-to-book in order to see what I'm looking at, you've lost me. The cover art may be amazing, but at a few centimetres high everything looks like the same blurry selection of colours. Good artwork on the spine uses the shape well and makes it look like a natural addition. The best examples of this are Karen Miller's
The Innocent Mage and
The Awakened Mage. The cover art is repeated on the spine, yes, but is uses the tall, narrow space available and makes it eye catching. I've not read the books (yet) but I'm always drawn to those books.
Design - unless the author is well known to me, this will be my first point of call. A good spine design can make all the difference between me picking it up and not realising that it's there in the first place. Joe Abercrombie's novels are great at this. They stand out from other novels on the shelf because they look like something other than a normal book. Pratchett's novels are also very good at this because his cover art encompasses the front, back and spine, so you have to pick it up to kind out what the hell is going on in that small section in front of you
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Running series - It's satifying to see an author's complete works running along your bookshelf, especially if the books are united by a single theme/design. This also applies when you're looking for books. A series with an interesting theme to tie them altogether will catch your eye and make you want to check it out. Right now the best example of that is David Farland's
Runelords series, where the covers of the eight books line up to form a complete panorama, as do the book spines (to a certain extent - and I've checked this, so you can be assured it's true). You can tell where that author's body of work in a given storyline begins and ends; you can gauge the kind of commitment you may have to make if you start reading it.
Does anyone else do this? Have you even thought about this kind of thing? I would love it if you all could email me a photo of your bookshelf, and for the next post I'd like to go over them and pick out what I'd be most likely to read based on the spines alone.
