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Is it vapid to care about the design of a book, particularly literature? Is there merit in a physical edition also serving as an object of beauty? Would you discriminate against an edition based on aesthetics?
I love great cover art but I dont particularly care about what the covers of the books I read look like
I've gone out of my way to get preferred covers for books - my book collection will be with me for the rest of my life and paying slightly above what is desired is peanuts for something I will own until I die. I wouldn't refuse to read a book with a cover that's a dog's dinner or a designer's vengeance on a cruel world, but if I can get something that speaks to me - why not? But then I'm ott - I scan any covers I've gone out of my way to get and photoshop them all clean and new again. In a fit of glee I had one printed on to a shirt. Brecht's 'Messingkauf Dialogues' - wore it to Tito's Mausoleum last week, hope he liked it.
Hell yeah I discriminate lol. Same for music -- cover art influences how much I enjoy a record way more than I’d like to admit. I think this is generally more justified with albums than books, as the cover is an intended part of the complete picture. The artists tend to choose it themselves and it’s “canonical” (doesn’t change with editions). It’s inherent to the object. It would be cool if this was more of a thing for books. You get interesting side effects, like certain art and design styles aligning themselves with certain genres and vice versa. It places the record in context and implicitly says “if you like x….”. But yeah, ultimately I’m not going to invite an object to live with me in my home if I only like what it represents and not what it is (an object). Fortunately, the accessibility of digital formats and libraries makes this a pretty easy rule to stick to.
I try to get a nice non-Penguin edition if I can, but I tend to do my shopping with specific books in mind. I’d rather have a more generic version of what I’m after now than spend 2 years trawling for a more “” authentic”” secondhand copy. 60s and 70s editions do tend to be my favourite though.
My copy of Crime and Punishment is a horrible Dover Thrift edition with an ugly as fuck cover that’s been dropped, sat on, immersed in various liquids, dog-eared the shit out of (not by me) and generally abused, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Nice covers are nice but there’s room in this world for mutts too.
Since I usually read pirated books on a kindle, when I do buy a physical copy, I usually do try to find my favorite cover (unless I'm pinned down by certain edition or translation, etc). I don't think there's anything wrong in caring about it at all. If anything I feel like more publishers should take it seriously. I sometimes listen to an album based on the cover art. Why shouldn't the same judgement be passed to books? To me, the cover is part of the book; it's not a separate entity. If we're talking classics, sure, the concept of book covers didn't exist back then. But with modern books, authors should know what the cover means. It's an important tool that distinguishes your book from a sea of new books in a store or site.
What is the purpose of the internet except to extract everything out of a hobby and only leave the worship of vanity? kidding but I do enjoy the physicality of books, and its holistic appearance definitely can impact your association or attachment to a work... I love thrifting, lending and trading books and seeing other people's markings or wear is something I really enjoy. I also will "upgrade" editions of books I love for nicer ones and give the old ones to a friend. I found my copies of Žižek's Plague of Fantasies and Didion's White Album in the trash on the ground of a college town and its a fun story to have associated with the two books.
For books that I've read and really love and will read again, I do like to find a nice edition if I can. But more important to me is to have variety on my shelves. I want cheap trade paperbacks, I want Folios, I want orange Popular Penguins, I want ex-library stuff, I want a few old mouldy complete works with the boards hanging off. The only thing I always avoid is print-on-demand.
I generally rent from the library. If I'm gonna own something and display it in my home, I want it to look nice. If it's a book that has a lot of meaning to me but shit aesthetics, I'll make an exception.
In high school I had a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire with cover art that looked like a porn video thumbnail, and I got a few comments for that reason. Needless to say, I did care (I got the book for free as a library discard so it wasn’t all bad). Beyond that, I don’t. With the exception of photography books, I tend to read a book for the contents, not the cover image—you likely do too for the most part. However, I don’t think it’s wholly vapid to care (though it is a tad consumerist). Aesthetics and beauty have very real purposes that have been covered at length by people far more intelligent than me. When not being read, which is the majority of the time, a book lives on a shelf or desk. It’s valid to care about its appearance then.
It absolutely matters. The book is a work of art. The author should treat it as such. If people don't pick up a book because the cover art isn't compelling, that's on the author. Some diction is so impressive that the author doesn't need to put incredible artwork on it, but, should the author choose to do so, it enhances the work by anything from a 1.5x modifier to modifiers far beyond that.
That book is a gorge.