Despite the fact that the author themselves may have completely nothing to do with the style of a book's front cover, they are a crucial part of it.
We love reading books since they are really lovely things. This is true, but the nature of beauty that we may be speaking about is definitely separate to what we might be speaking about if we were talking about, say, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have had books we have decorated them with beautiful book cover designs that effort to mirror the appeal of what is within. This goes back for as long as the codex itself has actually been around, with middle ages monks, those charged with the protection and duplication of the rare texts that could still be found, ornamenting each hand written text with amazingly abundant and stunning styles. In fact, such was the appeal held within these books that most of these creative book cover designs were sculpted into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of rare-earth elements. Individuals like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can most likely value the manner in which the beauty of these book covers was created to match the beauty within the book.
When you actually think of it, it is rather fantastic that a book's cover, no matter how lovely it is, is able to stand so eloquently for something that is nearly the total reverse of its art format-- writing in white and black. In fact, book covers have actually been developed to show the emotional state of a book and attract its designated audience since the advent of large scale publishing in the Victorian Era. Artists were tasked with discovering what makes a good book cover for particular individuals, or to put it simply, marketing. Individuals like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can most likely appreciate the role of marketing in designing book covers.
When we buy a book it becomes something extremely very personal to us. It can often be odd seeing a book you like with a different book cover, merely since it is not your book. This personalisation, and indeed ownership, of books was at an entirely various level at the dawning of the era of printing, with book covers being developed by the owners themselves, and what they believed would be the best books covers for the book. They would purchase the book itself from the printer wrapped in paper, then bring it to a binder who would bring in the covers to the client's requirements. This typically meant being outfitted in leather and then etched with the name of the book, and, more often than not, the name of the book's owner. Individuals like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can probably value the ownership that individuals come to feel in regards to their books.