Can we judge books by their covers?

When Mark Lawrence recently announced the ten finalists of this year’s SPFBO on the Fantasy subreddit, he had this to say about his earlier cover competition, in which the SPFBO bloggers nominated their favourite covers from this year’s entrants:

“But only 2 of the 10 finalists were in those cover nominations. So there’s no statistical support there for the idea that a better cover means a better book.”

That sounds like a challenge!

Okay, first, what Mark says is of course correct – there is...