Can you judge a book by its cover?

For every Wolf Hall or Life of Pi there's a shelf full of books given generic artwork that's simply shorthand for shoppers
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'Just as there are dreadful books, so there are dreadful covers; ditto trashy, ditto boring and ditto brilliant'

Can you imagine the fun they had coming up with this truly revolting cover? The proprietors of this excellent website collecting dire old science fiction covers have done just that, picturing the conversation that went on at the design meeting: "Ever seen a baby staring at bright flashing colours or the TV? Well draw that type of face! Except, floating disembodied through space." Indeed.

I must admit to having a bit of a thing for vintage science fiction covers – they can be so unashamedly nutty, so gloriously unselfconsciously zany, that they make today's collaborative, carefully pitched jackets look boringly sane. Of course, there are great jackets out there – in recent years Life of Pi, Vernon God Little, The Corrections and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, to name but a few, are all instantly recognisable; all stand out from the crowd.

But the major tendency these days is for jackets to act as a shorthand for the kind of book you're getting. White background and child's face? Misery memoir or Jodi Picoult-lite. Foil lettering, giant author name? Thriller. Pair of shapely legs? Chick lit. In fact, legs, shoes/and feet can cover the gamut of genres, as this great piece of analysis from Galleycat shows.

But what looks like a lack of originality can't be blamed entirely on designers, who'll have been briefed by the book's editor, marketing and sales people before coming up with a range of options. And even once a cover has been agreed in house, everything is subject to change if a retailer feels an approach doesn't work – and retailers, particularly supermarkets, are generally going to want a crime novel that looks like the last bestselling crime novel, a romance that clearly shows it's a romance. If a major bookseller says they won't stock a book unless the cover changes, then what's a publisher to do? The author, by the way, is unlikely to have any say in this at all unless they're a big name even though, a publisher friend tells me "they do get the chance to comment, suggest changes, etc and we (usually) listen to them".

Although the shorthand obviously helps shoppers in a hurry – and can even, if a publisher's clever enough, get a teenager to pick up a classic novel – it can also missell what lies within. Witness Lionel Shriver's anger at being given a girly cover, or the justifiable disappointment of OZKT29B, about the cover of Andrew Davies's The Gangs of Manchester: "While the book is a serious, scholarly affair the jacket is a mock-up of the Gangs of New York film poster." Well, yes.

And it might be more prevalent today but it's not like this misselling is something new: I'm currently reading Harnessing Peacocks, an old Mary Wesley novel I picked up in a charity shop. It's the usual biting, acerbic, amusing writing I expect from Wesley, but the Aga saga-style cover provides no clues that Wesley's heroine is, in fact, a prostitute. Instead it's Joanna Trollope-esque, cosy, safe – far removed from what the book actually is. Its publisher at the time obviously decided that taking this route was the best way to lure readers in (and, in fact, today's version isn't much more honest, taking a Picoult-ish, triumph-of-the-human-spirit sort of approach, which I'm sure Wild Mary would have rolled her eyes at).

But, even though it's immensely fun to look at some of the dire jackets out there (and this one, for Manhunting, makes me especially happy), I don't want to dwell on the negative. Just as there are dreadful books, so there are dreadful covers; ditto trashy, ditto boring and ditto brilliant. This blog picks out some gorgeous creations; OZKT29B loves the Wolf Hall paperback cover, and I am besotted by these Penguin science fiction jackets, as I've said before. Which book covers do you really love? And go on then – show us the worst you've seen as well.

• This article was commissioned following a suggestion by OZKT29B. If you would like to propose your own topics for us to cover, please visit the latest You tell us thread

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