I don't judge by the cover, I go by the title first. If the summary is interesting, I'll start reading. I don't buy books I haven't read before, though, unless they're part of a series I like.

1. by author. I usually go for books by my fav. author.

2. genre, I like thrillers, mysteries and sometimes fantasy so I pick up one of the best sellers in that section after reading the summery.

3. by recommendation from a friend or ad on tv if I like the plot. but this one is uncommon.

I'm a total scanner. I'll walk down a row of books until something catches my eye. It can be the title, an image, or the type of cover. I'll pull it out and look at the cover. I'll then read the synapse. If I'm still on the fence, I'll flick through a bit.

i just got a kindle so my method of choosing books had to totally change, can't look at the cover and it is harder to do the random paragraph test, now i just load up on a lot of free books and try them out if they don't interest me with in a few pages i go on to the next one

I have to admit, sometimes i scan the covers to see if something catches my eye, then i read the summery. the cover doesn't have to be awesome it just needs to catch my attention. if the summer sounds good i will check it out and then after reading a few chapters i will put it on my list to buy for later if i am unable to purchase it at that moment.

I read the title, if that's interesting then I read the summary. Unless it's written by one of my favorite authors. Then I just pick it automatically.

Sometimes a cover will look cool, but then the summary makes it sound boring.

Summary is the most important factor in my decision of buying a book or not . Cover might spark my interest, but there's a lot of awesome books with lame covers and useless books with pretty arts, sooo... nay. XD
And of course, if the book is from an author I already know and like, then I don't even have to think :)!

I tend to pick books based on their author. If it's by someone I like or who I've heard about, I'm more likely to pick it up. The cover art and title are also important, and I'm more likely to actually purchase a book if it has illustrations I like. I mostly read fantasy or classics and sometimes horror, and I actually used to pick books based on their length, because I liked long fantasy novels. (The Wheel of Time kinda burned me out on that, so that's not really a criterion anymore.)

Also, if a book has any kind on genderbending theme, I'm probably 5x more likely to pick it up

wolfcat87 wrote:Do you judge a book by it's cover? Do you read the summary on it's back or inside cover? Do you skim it? Do you only read highly recommended books? How do you choose?

If am i boring and dont know what to read ? At first i am opening social networks of my friends and look what did they read. If i cant find somth there, i open catalog like Project Gutenberg or other and find in my favorite genres.
I will open books one by one and read their annotations