I have no idea where it came from, but I learned it early-on in grade school, as did many of you:  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” we were instructed, with no qualification or room for disagreement.  It was a given, an a priori, like the earth revolving around the sun.

The maxim is more than a bit odd, though, and in at least two ways. It’s odd because we do judge a book by its cover, both figuratively and literally. And it’s an odd proscription because very often it actually works to judge a book by its cover.

Literally, we are told that the most important factor in a potential buyer’s decision whether or not to purchase a book is, next to price, the cover. On balance, the most compelling of all the covers quickly reviewed by a prospective buyer is the one that wins the bidding war for the book purchase.  (Of course, there’s certainly an exception to this rule for established, and especially famous, authors; their name alone is the single most important factor in the decision to purchase one of their books, not even next to price.  But this is an exception applying to only a tiny fraction of 1% of all book sales.)

But for the relatively unknown author, and especially — as is the case with me — the first-time author, it’s the cover that matters the most, as long as the price is competitive.

And it’s also rather literally true for those purchasing wine. There is a reason that there is such a wide variety of bottle labels, and why there is an almost numbing quality to the competition for your attention in the wine aisle.  It’s because, studies have shown, the label is the single most important reason that most people purchase a bottle of wine — again, next to price, as well as next to whether it is “red or white” wine that is being sought.  But the price and color are typically removed from the equation of label competition by the seller simply organizing all the wines according to color and price range before the search begins.

We are also told, figuratively, to “not judge a book by its cover” when it comes to things like making judgments about people, being told to not judge what is on the inside of a person by making judgments about the person’s outward appearance.

And the injunction carries over to judgments about other things as well, including food.  “I know it doesn’t look good,” we have been told repeatedly, “but just try it – and you’ll see that it is good!” And often, of course, it isn’t any better than what the appearance suggested it would be.

But there’s a major reason why people so commonly “do judge a book by its cover,” both literally and figuratively.  It’s because, as I stated early on, it tends to work.  And so, for example, we often make judgments about people, and whether to get close to them, or to believe or trust them, based on the appearance or “cover” of their faces. And we do this because it’s the kind of judgment executed over time that has proven itself, and why even young children decide whether to approach or trust someone based on the cover of their faces and what they communicate about what’s behind those who wear those faces.

I recall an especially memorable remark made by an older, famous actor, Faye Dunaway, who said, “People are their faces.”  That is to say, she was asserting, happy people do not look like they are angry people, and angry people do not look like they are happy people, and that troubled or grieving or guileful people show on their faces on the outside what is going on in a fundamental, shaping way on the inside.  Two people can be smiling widely, but the smile of a guileful person is different from that of a person being forthright.  According to Dunaway, no amount of false advertising on the cover of the face can hide what is truly going on in the heart.

And there is a reason that chefs pay so much attention to the “presentation” of food on a plate.  It’s because good food looks good!  And food that looks good tends to make that food taste good – or at least to taste better than would otherwise be the case apart from its presentation.

So that there is an actual interplay or synergy going on many times between what someone or something looks like on the outside and what is taking place on the inside.  They do not exist independently, and appearance very often has a lot to do with how someone perceives and experiences what is beneath or inside the appearance, and especially so when that interplay is intended.   That is to say, when expectation about the inside of something is set up by the appearance that is designed to create that expectation, the one expecting ought to have an enhanced experience of what is beneath the appearance.

Of course, delivering on matching the inner substance with the outward appearance is the sine qua non — that without which that enhanced experience could not occur.  And so, food that really does not taste good is not going to be made to taste good (or any better!) by virtue of a good appearance.  But it is the case that the appearance of already-good food, or the appearance of food that is able to taste good if given the appropriate opportunity, can make the food taste better – and often much better!

At the strong urging – and then under the direction – of my son Michael, who understands all this better than I, the publisher and I set out to change the covers originally designed for The Books of Bairnmoor, keeping one thing in mind. We wanted to find someone to create covers for the Blackfire Trilogy that would create not just accurate reflections of the story that was on the inside of the fantasy novel, but accurate expectations about what the reader would find, so that, it was hoped, the reader would have an enhanced pleasure in reading what was behind and between the covers.  That is to say, we wanted the covers to make what we thought was already a good story … a better story — covers as part of the story and part of the reader’s enjoyment of the story, inside and out, beginning to end.

I don’t know for sure to what extent to date that has happened for readers of The Books of Bairnmoor, but I sincerely hope it has been the case for many of them – and will be for you. I hope the covers, so carefully and beautifully created by the exceedingly talented Romanian artist Anastasia Agavriloaie, reflect the story between the covers:  a story about a land that is beautiful in all its fantastical strangeness and compelling in all its seeming realness; about the deepest of human struggles and the most controlling of existential mysteries; about characters-and-situations that are as old as time itself but also contemporary and always relevant; about characters who are precious and lovely in all their strengths and brokenness, and real in all their easy doubting and difficult striving to be trusting and hopeful in the face of despair and against every indication that the Good has lost; about the mystifying power of subtly-supernatural capacities (such as hope and perseverance and faith and love and courage) gifted to ordinary (and even quite debilitated) individuals; about the peculiar ability of non-human characters to help us see better what it means to be human; about the annihilating destruction of betrayal and the countervailing – and redeeming – force of forgiveness; about the power of personal integrity and the conquering quality of community as priority; about the abiding sense that behind an all-encompassing darkness and overwhelming evil there is yet an unseen (or only lamely-glimpsed) light of Goodness that will ultimately prevail; and lastly, about the reality that sometimes story says best what is truest and most important to know and remember in the most meaningful of daily lives, and especially when it comes to truth and the nature of what it means to be fully human being tied up in a relationship between creator and creature.

So, I honestly hope that, at the outset, you will judge my fantasy trilogy by its covers, and in this way test to see if your expectations encouraged by the covers both accurately reflect what is going on “between the covers” and in some significant way add to your enjoyment of the entire story throughout each of the three volumes, cover to cover.  Either way, let me know! You can contact me on my “Connect” page.

Thanks for stopping by and lingering to ponder for a bit.