Quite a few stories recently have the reading world at large reconsidering the importance of a book’s cover. In today’s age of e-books, are book covers more important than ever?

Stories in The Independent, The Guardian, and The New York Times each posit that printed books have to distinguish themselves in order to stand out from the e-book market; that, as this excellent round-up in Publishers Weekly says, ”in order to survive,” we must reconsider “the dark arts of book design.” (Sounds like Professor Snape would be a great teacher for that course!)

Humans are certainly visual creatures, and eye-catching covers have definitely lured me in to purchasing or reading books I didn’t otherwise plan on purchasing or reading. Have they done the same for you? When it comes to a book, just how important is the cover?

The media coverage got me thinking about the book covers I’ve loved this year. Cleopatra’s Moon is one of my faves; so is Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. What are yours?