I’m going to say it’s like a chicken and egg scenario.
It’s recommended that you don’t judge a thing or a person based on a quick glance. That’s good advice.
Book covers are designed specifically to be judged at a quick glance because they know that’s what people do, despite the advice they were given.
I was told that the rest of the saying is “but it’s a good place to start.”
Maybe book covers should be auto-generated from the entire text fed to an AI artist
No. Some are richly designed to showcase the book contents and others are not. That’s the entire point! It’s not the books with fancy covers that are always the best. You could find a plain cover copy of The Hobbit in your local library next to another copy that is oversized with a gold-embossed cover and an amazing painting showing the party of 14 plus a Wizard huddled on a mountaintop against the storm…
…and they’re still the same book.
My copy of The Hobbit is really weird it’s just leather and says The Hobbit in gold inset writing.
Absolutely nothing on the back, or even a barcode.
Really old books tend not to have covered designs that seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon.
Yes, but you still don’t know if the content is good or bad.
It wasn’t when the idiom was coined. Have you seen hard-bound books from the 19th century in libraries?
