Oh, look at the pretty book covers...on Tuesday Thinger!

Now, if you are a regular reader here, you may have noticed that I am a big fan of Library Thing, but today's Tuesday Thinger from Wendi's Book Corner, has me rather upset!

Questions: Do you have any missing covers (they show as a plain gray book)? Did you have a favorite view (title, author, date entered)? Do you have any favorite covers? If so, is there anything they have in common?

So, over I trotted to my happy little Library Thing page and waited for my covers to all load...and then was rather upset to see that I have quite a few missing covers. Actually, 170 out of 1169, which is what, like 15%. That is awful! But it is not my fault. Well, a few of them are. I know that I have some missing ones and since they are books that there are no covers for, I need to scan them and upload them. But I can't find the power cord for my scanner, that I have not used in a very long tine and it just seems very wasteful to buy a scanner to scan a few books...since I have not used it in a very long time. Hmmmm...do you thing they would notice if I scanned them at work?

BUT...I clicked on a number of books that show the default cover...and BTW, you can change your default cover ya know...and they show as having covers. Why are they not showing up?? Oh, this is very upsetting and totally unacceptable. Who do I need to speak to about this? I need names!

My favorite view is the one that groups the least coverless ones together. Author is terrible, because the pile of Harvard Classics that I have, since they have multiple authors in one volume, all show up first in that view and all without their covers...no, that is very bad. Date entered and title will do the same thing, since I entered them all on the same day and they all show as having the same title, Harvard Classic first...but at least it is further down the page.

Favorite covers and what do they have in common...hmmmmm...that is hard. I like to see them all together, all the colors, the variety. But as individual books, what do I like? Well, I know what I do not like and that is covers that have the author and title in huge letters and use very bright colors. It seems like they are shouting at me. Now, while I like her books and find them very amusing, Evanovich's books are the perfect example of what I do not like in a cover. I am sorry...but it looks cheap to me.
Obviously, it has not hurt her sales though. It might be very important for a more unknown author, a book that you are not going to recognize in the store by name or title, but I really doubt Ms. Evanovich has to worry it at this point. Which is good, since at least that series of her books all use the same look. And I guess it does depend on the audience that you are trying to attract. I guess there may be a really bright, loud cover crowd out there.

I like more subtle ones, ones with graphics rather than photos usually, even rather stark black and white one. Clean and neat...See, these covers are calm and I think they are very pretty. That would make me want to pick that book up off a table in a bookstore and find out more about it. Those loud ones just make me want to run and hide.
I think they should be a bit mysterious even, grab your attention and yet make you wonder what the book is about, what is inside that cover, so that you just have to pick it up and take a look.


...and speaking of taking a look, let's see if we can find a nice Tuesday picture of Bandit, the cutest little doggie in the whole wide world, from his own little blog, the world from down here.
oh Bandit, what are you up to? You look like you are about to get in some trouble. You wouldn't be a bad little puppy, would you? No, you wouldn't, you cute little feller.

---