Prompted by Susie's recent post in the Blog about the major 'schools' of cookbook cover design, I used EYB to explore which and what kind of covers appeal most strongly to me. Scrolling down the thumbnails of the books on my Bookshelf (which includes both books I own and books of interest), whenever an image grabbed me, I applied a 'covers' Bookmark. Then I used the 'Look in Books' filter for the new 'covers' Bookmark to take a look at my page's worth of choices all together
It was easy to read preferences this clear at a glance: A strong majority have ingredients as the cover image. Of the quarter or so that feature finished foods, all are baked and have some kind of crust. The remainder of the covers are some variation of stylized line drawings.
I've known for a while that cover pictures of the cook/author are a negative for me, but hadn't realized how drawn I am to ingredient imagery. But now that I think of it, those warm, tasteful drawings of vegetables and fruits on the covers of Cook's Illustrated magazines were a big factor in encouraging me to buy them in the first place, and then to save them in a real magazine file, rather than the haphazard stacks I had for other favorite catalogs and magazines. And the two pieces of artwork in the kitchen are paintings of vegetables and fruit.
No matter how appealing a book might look, though, reviewing my holdings and wishlists also made it clear how low cover design is on the scale of things that make me want to own (versus read) a cookbook. At this point, a cookbook's content has to fill a real gap to earn shelf space. But for winter reading, borrowed from the library or a friend, beauty's a powerful lure!
Try it yourself; you may be surprised at what you're drawn to.