Judging a Book By its Cover, Brian Kenji Iwana, Seiichi Uchida. [v1] Fri, 28 Oct 2016. arXiv:1610.09204

“Book covers communicate information to potential readers, but can the same information be learned by computers? We propose a method of using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to predict the genre of a book based on the visual clues provided by its cover. The purpose is to investigate whether relationships between books and their covers can be learned. However, determining the genre of a book is a difficult task because covers can be ambiguous and genres can be overarching. Despite this, we show that a CNN can extract features and learn underlying design rules set by the designer to define a genre. Using machine learning, we can bring the large amount of resources available to the book cover design process.”