Upfront About Its Cursorariness

“The world’s most superficial book reviews.” How can you not love a Web site that promotes its contents so unabashedly?

Judge a Book by Its Cover (JABBIC) says it “offers brief, irreverent reviews and ratings of current books based solely on their covers. No pre-reading plot summaries. No peeking inside. Just an honest reaction to the visual pitch publishers [make] to readers. Each book gets a short, snappy review and a star rating—all judged from the cover alone. ‘This isn’t about literary analysis—it’s about that first, instinctive reaction every reader has when they see a book for the first time,’” explains founder Gary Apple, a comedy writer.

For example, here is JABBIC’s assessment of The Writer (Little, Brown), a March release from James Patterson and J.D. Barker:

This strikes us as a book that’s a little insecure about what it is. Maybe it doesn’t trust readers to figure it out on their own, so it spells things out: “A Thriller” and “You’ll Never Forget the Ending …” (Neither of which are review quotes, by the way—just bold declarations slapped on the cover like a marketing intern’s fever dream.) And ANY book can say “You’ll never forget the ending.”

The oversized gold text screams JAMES PATTERSON while poor J.D. Barker plays the backup singer with slightly smaller font. Oddly, the smallest name is “James.” Go figure.

The title, The Writer, is vague bordering on generic—but the design does pull us in. That blazing red aura around the woman’s silhouette (the writer, we assume?) gives the whole thing a heat that’s hard to ignore. Paired with the tagline, it’s trying really hard to say, “Something shocking is coming …”

We’re not diehard Patterson readers (sorry), but this cover might get us to flip it over and check the back. Mission accomplished?

If we had to guess …
It’s about a famous female writer whose life unravels when a man accuses her of stealing his book. She insists it’s fiction. He insists it’s his life. Someone’s lying—and someone’s about to turn up dead.

What a fabulous gig! As one who’s spent much of his life actually reading books in order to come up with thoughtful analyses—which can demand many hours, or even days to complete—I envy those JABBIC contributors who dash off their opinion of a new work after a perfunctory inspection. Imagine all of the time I could have saved, if I’d only known this sort of critiquing was an option!

JABBIC’s contents include best-selling fiction and non-fiction works, brand-new releases as well as some older tomes. And at the bottom of every page, a pop-up delivers the publisher’s description of the book in question, so you can see how accurate the reviewer was in his or her guess. The site updates its features weekly.

One change I’d like to see made: JABBIC is all about the book covers, so shouldn’t it tell who created those fronts? Crediting the designer and photographer/artist would seem the respectful thing to do.