[poll id=”9″]

A very thorough poll for you there. Hopefully there’s something for everyone!

I wouldn’t buy a book solely on the basis of its cover, but about half my library rentals have been because I liked the look of it*. And there’s a bit of positive reinforcement there, because I haven’t had a bad rental, so I keep doing it. However, there have been a few times I’ve purchased a book in a situation where the cover has had a strong influence, along with blurb/extract/etc, and been very disappointed. As a result, when the wallet comes out so does the buyer’s discretion, and I want the minimum of an extract before I’ll part with my money.

On the flip side, a bad cover hasn’t put me off a book, though it has put me off a publisher (this tend to be a specifically e-issue, since publisher branding isn’t such a big thing in print). It’s certainly put me off a lot of self-published books; I know not everyone can afford to pay for a decent cover, but self-publishing if the only arena in publishing where spending money to make money really does hold true. At the very least invest in yourself and develop the skill to make an appealing cover.

Where do you stand? And has it ever backfired on you?

*Soulless by Gail Carringer, Bruce Campbell’s autobiography, a book about a vampire that I’ve been trying to remember the name of for six years now…