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This is kind of a misfit topic; 'Book Recommendations' seemed like the best fit.

Dust jackets on cookbooks are a real dilemma for me. I hate them. They are so impractical on a book you are regularly going to pull down from the shelf, they'll soon tatter. And most of a dust jacket's purpose is advertising, which is obsolete once you have it home.

So why don't I just get rid of them? I was raised to respect books and it feels like it's part of the book. It feels like sacralige to get rid of them. And some have beautiful photography on them. I really wish all cookbooks were designed like "Ottolenghi Flavor", "The Professional Chef" and "Modernist Cuisine at Home", where the book's own cover has all the beautiful photography and such, and there is no dust jacket.

By the same token, I think book designers sometimes don't think through the practicality of their designs. I have one cookbook, a popular UK chef's first, where the title was originally in cream on baby blue, now faded to illegibility. Unfortunately, the book designer made a similar mistake on the actual book spine, and if exposed to light it would in a few years also be unreadable.

So what do I do? I toss them when they become shredded, but mostly I stay annoyed and grumble, LOL.

I know somebody who takes them off and files them. Thing is most (but not all) books under the dust jacket are blank.

I am in the process of removing all of them. I used to keep them in case the book would move on to someone else, but I am accepting more and more that my cookbooks are there to be used by me, so they should be in the state that I prefer, which is without a dust jacket. I actally prefer the plain book covers to the picture on the dust jacket most of the time. Nigella Lawson's Kitchen is my favorite, where the book looks like a wooden cutting board.

You can buy clear book jacket covers in many sizes and quantities from Brodart on line. I bought a roll and covered a ton of cookbooks as well as a few other books. Great quality and are holding up well. I love how the colorful jackets look on my bookshelf.

In case anyone doesn't know, Brodart is a library-supply vendor.

I like the look of most dust jackets, unless there's a picture of the author on the part covering the spine. 

I'm also afraid I won't recognize the cookbook with the dust jacket off.

So I keep the dust jacket on until it falls off by itself..

There's an unusual case among the books I have -not a cookbook but a book about religion in the USA. It's No Offense, by John Murray Cuddihy, o.p. and unavailable from Amazon. I would link to it if I could.

On the dust jacket is a reproduction of a painting which the author refers to in the text. It is only on the dust jacket, not on the cover, and AFAIK the book has never been in any format but hardcover. When the dust jacket is gone, you don't know what the author is referring to.

You can almost hear the publisher, "It's okay we're forgoing the expense of binding in a photo plate. We'll put it on the dust jacket."

I've noticed in fiction books, where a painting or place important to the plot once would have been described in great detail, now the description is minimal, I presume because we are expected to look it up on the internet. It's nice we can.

The painting mentioned in "No Offense" can be seen on the page for the book on Amazon (a reproduction of a reproduction) even tho you can't buy the book there. 

Isn't it a bitch that you can't request Kindle editions on Amazon anymore?

Before I retired I was a librarian who sometimes did original cataloging, and one day I found another reproduction of a painting that was germane to the text, on the dust jacket and nowhere else. So my boss sent a note to technical processing to do something to preserve the jacket illustration. 

No dilemma here - I toss 'em and don't think twice about it.

I believe there's no greater way to respect a book than to make it mine and put it to good use.

i don't think here in the UK I've seen a new cookbook with a dust jacket in years, we get colourful covers but no separate wrapper

I have few remaining dust jackets, the one on Elizabath David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery is holding up well, but it's more of a readining/reference book than one I take to the stove,

thank you @vikingcook for the inormation about Brodart!  I ordered three different types of book jacket covering material and will post again here to report the results.  I ordered enough to cover about 75 books I think including the self stick material to cover my paperback cookbooks.  

This is a really cool idea that I look forward to working on to help preserve my cookbooks.  I can sort of see how the results should look because I ordered a couple of books from Thriftbooks and they turned out to be discarded library books with the jacket coverings intact.  So I can use them as examples of how to apply the film when it comes.  

UPDATE: 

I received 3 different types of covering material:

1.   A self stick laminate to cover soft cover books.  I am finding it hard to get the bubbles out of it, but it's okay I guess to help keep soft cover books in good shape longer.  Not stoked about the bubble problem though.  I covered 1 book without bubbles, but it was small.  The others I'm having a really hard time with.  Pkg covers 25 books $43.18


2. Econo Fold II-to cover book jackets.  This is just the film with self stick tabs and a foldover for the top of the jacket.  The bottom of the jacket you fold to fit.  Works really well and I like it a lot.  Pkg covers 25 books $8.56


3. Just-A-Fold II.  This is like the #2 above, but comes with paper to help give the cover some extra strength I guess.  Seems like that's the only difference between the two jacket covering materials.  Pkg covers 25 books  $13.69

I ended up spending $76 for the 3 packages.  The most expensive was #1 which I don't know that I would purchase again.  

#2 and #3 were totally worth it, but you have to consider that shipping for me was about $11 so if I order again I'll probably just order multiple packages of #3 since it's not that much more than #2.  I highly recommend the materials and you can watch YouTube videos for how to do it if you don't understand the instructions that come in the package.  

I keep my cookbook covers, although they get tattered. I covered some with plastic film, but that became too tedious.

I have mild color blindness and cannot read spines with low contrast lettering.  I took a black Sharpie & casually traced the low contrast lettering. It solved that problem nicely.

I will look into the suggested coverings as long as they are see-through.  I consider dust jackets to be another form of art.