The game of the name

Judging a book by a cover is what marketing experts in the publishing industry want us to do, knowing we will anyway.

All of us are familiar with the warning about not judging a book by its cover. But we all do it, to varying degrees. The pace of modern life requires us to make quick conclusions amid the avalanche of information that comes our way every day. And, as The Review section of The National explained yesterday, that includes judging books by their covers.

As Tahira Yaqoob writes, this is an art form of its own within the world of publishing, with marketing experts who specialise in changing the appearance of a book and creating a bestseller out of a title that might otherwise languish on the shelves of bookshops and libraries.

Sometimes, the name needs to be short and catchy. F Scott Fitzgerald considered On the Road to West Egg, Incident at West Egg, and Trimalchio in West Egg for The Great Gatsby, the book that made him famous.

But sometimes quirky is good. Would Salmon Fishing in the Yemen or A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian have caught the eye if they were graced with less outlandish titles?

The digital era, with downloads of e-books, is changing even this. Increasing numbers of us will judge a book by its screenshot rather than its cover – but we will still make snap decisions about what we see.