One of the oldest and most popular phrases tells us that we should not judge a book by its cover… but it would be a serious mistake to deny the power of good design to attract attention. The problem is that some authors seem to ignore this detail completely, and lacking the resources to hire a professional artist, they decide to try it themselves. That has turned Amazon into a catalog full of book covers worthy of a Paint session, or with hand-drawn illustrations of… questionable quality, so to speak.
A "trick" that publishers often apply when releasing books that have a film adaptation is to use an image taken from the movie. I have seen it in cases like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Blade Runner), "Ready Player One", "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", "The Road", and many, many more. We generally reject those versions. Even when we know the book is good (or comes loaded with excellent recommendations), we cannot avoid judging it by its cover.
Now, look at these covers on Amazon. Perhaps one of them hides the great literary gem of the 21st century, a story so rich and deep that it should be studied in schools and universities, but one thing is certain: with those designs, it is likely that no one will ever find it. At the same time, there is another possibility… and that is that if they write books like they draw covers, it would be best to keep your distance.
