Book cover importance

[teitan]

I was wondering something, does the cover of a book help you decide if you want to buy a product? On a scale of 1-5 how important is the cover to you and please post some of your favorite covers for RPG products by title. Also explain why if you would like. This could be fun.

 

[teitan]

I shall now respond to myself. I think covers are very important to the overall product. AN ugly cover can make a game unsightly, even more so than interior art does at times. Spycraft has a great cover, very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid. I also like the cover for Revised Star Wars. Both are excellent.

 

[EricNoah]

I like a cover that shows people or creatures in action. Covers that are "designs" or made to look like the cover of an old book just don't do it for me. The cover should give me a big, pretty gulp of what's inside -- the tone, the scope, the content, the genre, the style. It shouldn't be generic or re-used art, no matter how good it is. If you put a picture of a sexy drow lady holding a skull on the cover, that book better be about drow necromancers.

That said, if I get a chance to look at the cover and the interior, the layout and interior art will have just about as big an impact on me as the cover (i.e. some but not a lot).

Examples of covers I liked:

Hollowfaust
FR: Lords of Darkness, Silver Marches, Magic of Faerun
Lord of the Iron Fortress
A lot of the covers and full-page illustrations in Dungeon Magazine (for instance, this month just you try to tell me that the picture of the mohrg by Jason Engle doesn't make you sit up and take notice)

 

[gamecat]

The cover isn't important at all, to me. I bought oriental adventures, and look at that! A good scrip on the back is important, though.

 

[alsih2o]

is 1 the high #. or 5?

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

So is this 1 being the least import and 5 being the most or the other way? It would be nice to know bfore I vote.

 

[EricNoah]

I edited the wording of the choices, arbitrarily setting 1 as low and 5 as high. With only 4 votes in it shouldn't matter too much if that messes those four voters up (one of whom was me).

 

[Phowett]

3

I do prefer to have a good looking cover, but I'm more concerned with the quality of the contents.

 

[Olive]

well i would have said 2, but then i remembered that i haven't even looked at the bastion press stuff, because the art is so bad...

so i said three.

PS what was wrong with OA's cover art? i quite liked it...

 

[Victim]

I usually see the side of a book way before the cover. Even though I've flipped through Secrets and Societies a few times, I never saw the cover until my brother picked it up.