I enjoyed Hellboy, but then I never read him so thats probally explains that. Have you watched the two animated movies of Hellboy that have come out on DVD in the last few months?

I would send the books back, thats just me, until I found what I really wanted.

"and i finally got a copy of the 'marie antoinette' bio, that doesn't have snaggletooth dunst on the cover. wheeee! "

When movies hit the media (if not the box-office) big like 'Marie Antoinette' did, that's the time to scour the remainders tables and bargain bins. Usually, the assoicated book in its previous incarnation (with a presumably more tasteful cover) can be found there, often in hardback and for a fraction of the cost of the new, super-glossy, Hollywood endorsed edition.

You forgot to mention 'topic du jour' - all media focusing on a single theme on one day, only to switch completely to another the next day.

TV culture permeating everything seems to be more of an anglo-saxon thing at the moment; here in France, there's still a lot of respect for the written word, and no shortage of bookshops which don't plaster their books with 'as seen on TV' labels. From what I've seen also in other countries, a consolidation is taking place, bookshops either going after the large turn-over, low margin market (where marketing decides on success of the peddled wares) or after the much smaller independent reader market. The latter can only survive in bigger cities, I fear, and even there, I know of only a handful of such bookshops in San Francisco, Zurich, somewhat more in Paris, ... I fear that our tastes are not very much in the mainstream...

But back to the original topic. I'll certainly plead guilty to judging a book by its cover, at least when browsing through a bookshop for new authors: when choosing which book to pull out of the rows upon rows, I do look at the spine design, then the title, then, once I have the book in hand, in equal parts at the general layout and description on the back, and finally, I'll read the first page or two. Excellent books with poor graphic design won't make it past that filter, I'm afraid.