How a book presents itself in the shop means a lot to me as far as books go, which is perhaps wrong but there you go.

Something could be the best written story in the world but if I don’t like how it looks then it’s going to be left on the shelf.

I have a few different criteria on how to choose a book when in a shop - this changes slightly if I’m buying from Amazon or somewhere else online - but in a shop, the size of the book matters, the price, the font and also the cover.

It may sound shallow, but if the cover is naff then what is meant to attract me to the book? If it looks rubbish then I’ll never pick it up to find out what the story is all about, therefore meaning I’ll never buy the thing and make the author some money.

The size of the book can also be a factor, in combination with the price. If two books look as if they will be enjoyable, are both the same price yet one has twice as many pages as the other, it doesn’t take two guesses to work out which one I would buy.

I say the font is also a factor - what I really mean is the layout of the book. Something which tries to cram too many words onto a page just doesn’t work for me, it makes reading a chore irrespective of what story the words are unveiling to me. I like a book to be well spaced out with a decent sized typeset and plenty of white space on each page. I don’t mean half the page should be emppty, but there should be a decent border round the edge and not too many lines crammed in together.

Reading should be enjoyable and a badly setout novel just isn’t that enjoyable to read.

The last few books I’ve read have been from the Spook’s Apprentice series, a collection of books I’ve really enjoyed so far.

I explained that the first couple of books were bought almost by accident but they were the lucky ones picked up for free in a 3-for-2 offer. That’s where I generally end up reading most books by authors I’ve not tried before as I see it as a chance to try someone new for free.

This is especially the case where it’s important that a book really grabs me. I’m looking for something different and I’ve a whole shop to choose from!

What drew me to these books was that not only were they amongst the books recommended by the shop workers, but I thought the covers looked fantastic.

They had the look of books from some time ago, although obviously I knew it was only intended to look bound and would be the usual textured paper underneath really. On that day it was the looks that count - the first two books in the series were wrapped together in cellophane so I couldn’t even read the blurb on the back or anything.

So it was the cover design which won me over coupled with the fact that I was getting both of the books for the price of one, and that one was in actual fact free!

Which brings me to the real purpose of this.

I’m now up to date with the Spook’s Apprentice books and was looking to see when the next one is due out when I noticed all the old ones were being re-released to coincide with the launch of the new books and that they would have newly designed covers.

I’ve nothing against that kind of thing as it happens all the time - I’ve lost count of the number of different covers stuck on the front of Stephen King novels for example - but are these new ones really better?

I know which of these I prefer :

Mind you, I’m not exactly the intended market for these books and it may be these new more action-packed covers will increase sales to teenagers, or the young adult market as they seem to call it now.

Personally, I prefer the old covers and would like the books available in both a bit like the Harry Potter books which appeared in both children and adult editions which had different designs on the front. I’m not sure this series is quite so popular so the economics of that maybe don’t add up.

The author, Joseph Delaney, deserves for his books to be a huge success as I find them every bit as good as the Harry Potter series so hopefully this redesign will bring him an increased following.

Perhaps the main reason I’m not so keen on the new covers is that I’ll be constantly reminded that the book I’m reading isn’t actually intended for my age group!