Can You Judge a Book by Its Cover?

We’ve all heard the advice: don’t judge a book by its cover. Well that’s about to change thanks to a couple of guys from California who want you to do just that. Their new site playjudgey.com asks you to rate a series of book covers and give them a star rating between zero and five. After your done, the site shows you how the book faired on Goodreads.

In a CBC interview with host Helen Mann, Nate Gagnon, one of the site’s cofounders said, “I work in advertising. You get a lot of cliches and lines. So, we kind of thought that it would be funny if we could say go ahead and judge a book by its cover.”

The site which launched at the end of August has already had nearly three million responses. Gagnon says that most covers are rated lower than the book was rated by people who had read it. He believes people will rate books higher after reading them because they “have spent the time with it.”

According to Gagnon’s partner Dean Casalena, the second worst rated book cover earned only a 1.4 star rating. The book was Justin Bieber’s biography. However Goodreads contributors rated it 4.4.

You can test your ability to judge covers yourself at playjudgey.com.