These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 5: Reading.

Judging a Book by Its Cover

• The cover is an indispensable entry point for reading the book.

• The cover is made to protect the book, but its design is supposed to reflect the book’s content. It is okay, then, to judge a book by its cover, but that judgment should not go beyond a kind of a fleeting impression and an aesthetic and expressive taste.

• It’s a good idea for the book to start engaging the reader vigorously with the cover, whether through an interactive, motivational title’s syntax or an inspirational, commentary-attracting design.

• The idea of a book cover does not have to refer directly to its content. On the contrary, sometimes indirect thoughts are more attractive. It is wise to take this into consideration before deciding to judge a book by its cover.

• Instead of judging a book by its cover, judge the cover itself.

• In addition to being an indication of the content in one way or another, it is good to look at the cover in a parallel way as if it were an independent creation, whether in terms of the connotation of the title selection or the pure artistic design.

• No matter how hard and smart you work to design the cover, it will not satisfy everyone whether as an entry to reading the book or even as an independent piece of art.

• The designer should not only read the title. It is important for him or her to read the book or at least go through it if he or she aspires to create an attractive cover with deep significance.

• The deliberately misleading title and cover design, to gain more readers and achieve popularity, may have adverse long-term effects regarding the credibility of the content, both for the publisher and the author. Misleading cover design may attract non-target readers who are not really interested in the book. Conversely, it may alienate the book’s main target audience.

• It is good for the designer to be flexible to provide more than one genuinely different cover design to allow the publisher and author to choose comfortably among them. But with focus, passion, and open-mindedness about the expectations of the author and the audience, a satisfying and distinctive cover can be created efficiently without the need for many attempts.