Examining... book covers

I've been thinking of having a few articles about books on the blog, so the first post in the Examining... series is all about book covers.

Everyone knows the saying 'Never judge a book by it's cover'. This is true. I have read books whose covers I did not like (Remember how much I don't like sn*kes? Anything with a sn*ke on the cover has me whimpering - I'll place other books on top of it, but when I'm reading it I'm absolutely fine (goes a little pale at some scenes in Hunger)). Yet I didn't choose/receive the books because of the cover. I chose them because the blurb sounded good.

I realise a lot of people buying books may not buy a book if they don't like the cover. So I think publishers do all they can to make a book appealing. For example, a lot of books in the YA/paranormal genres are dark covered, with a hint of colour. Just look at the following examples.

I admit that while on a book shopping spree (whose numbers of books we do not talk about), I did pick up several such books, guessing what they were because of the cover (which usually involves purple - not sure why. I'd like to make a note that not everyone can clearly read certain colours on certain backgrounds - red/pink/violet/purple on black is not easy to ready for this reviewer. It doesn't stop me buying the books though).

Right, so we have one genre covered. (no pun intended)

Let's look at the brightly coloured books which could have been created using highlighters, or really bright paint.

All of these books had a fair amount of humour in. Other children's books are just as colourful, with equal amounts of humour. These were the neon range that caught my eye.

Then there's the urban fantasy covers - if I see anything like these I have a pretty good idea what's inside them.

Or there's the epic fantasy books with white covers (which mostly come from Orbit...) If I see a book like this, I usually guess the genre and publisher correctly. (Ok so all these are from Orbit. Maybe the white style is an Orbit style?)

Relatively speaking, I'm pretty new to reading so many newly released books (thank you to all my donators for this opportunity). I'll be interested to see whether covers for these genres stay the same over the next decade, or if they too will change as readers' tastes change. Perhaps at a later date, when I've reviewed more books, I'll do an Examining...book covers part 2.