Judging a book by its cover

Much ado this morning about Joanna Trollope, the chief judge at this year’s Orange Prize, who admitted that she was ‘influenced’ by a book’s cover. The Bookseller’s Philip Stone told the Times that ‘he was surprised that Joanna Trollope said that covers are significant. In a literary prize a book should be judged by the prose’.

The prize will be judged on prose, but Trollope’s comments about covers are hardly novel, even in the context of serious literary prizes. Julian Barnes won the Booker prize and proceeded to thank his cover designer, saying:

‘Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we’ve come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the eBook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping.’

That applies to literary fiction above all.