Even though we might like to claim that it is not the case, books are undoubtedly judged by their covers.
When we purchase a book it becomes something extremely personal to us. It can in some cases be unusual seeing a book you enjoy with a different book cover, just due to the fact that it is not your book. This personalisation, and indeed ownership, of books was at an entirely various level at the origin of the age of printing, with book covers being developed by the owners themselves, and what they believed would be the best books covers for the book. They would buy the book itself from the printer covered in paper, then take it to a binder who would add the covers to the customer's specs. This usually meant being dressed in leather and then inscribed with the name of the book, and, more often than not, the name of the book's owner. Individuals like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can probably appreciate the ownership that people come to feel in relation to their books.
When you actually think of it, it is quite fantastic that a book's cover, no matter how beautiful it is, manages to stand so eloquently for something that is practically the total antithesis of its art form-- writing in black and white. In fact, book covers have been developed to reflect the ambiance of a book and interest its desired audience ever since the advent of big scale publishing in the Victorian Period. Artists were entrusted with finding what makes a good book cover for particular individuals, or in other words, marketing. People like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can most likely value the function of marketing in developing book covers.
We like checking out books since they are extremely stunning things. This holds true, however the nature of beauty that we might be speaking about is certainly different to what we might be discussing if we were discussing, say, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have had books we have decorated them with beautiful book cover designs that attempt to mirror the appeal of what is within. This goes back for as long as the codex itself has actually been around, with middle ages monks, those charged with the security and proliferation of the scarce texts that might still be found, ornamenting each hand written text with astonishingly rich and gorgeous styles. In fact, such was the charm held within these books that a lot of these creative book cover designs were carved into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of precious metals. Individuals like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can most likely value the way that the beauty of these book covers was developed to match the beauty within the book.