Judging Books By Cover Not Easy in E-Book Era

Wednesday, 31 March 2010 | by Pat's Picks

The New York Times puts a nice business perspective on something I’ve noted before, namely that “you can?t tell a book by its cover if it doesn?t have one.” When people are reading a Kindle on the subway you can’t snoop at the cover to figure out what they’re reading. And this has not gone unnoticed by publishers who say they regard the cover as a bit of free advertising.

My colleague Colin Miner links the e-book story to a school literacy campaign, noting that students could be left behind in our enthusiasm for the Kindle.