Book "Covers" in the Age of the eBook

From the O'Reilly TOC (Tools of Change for Publishing) blog, a thoughtful consideration by James Bridle: " ... [eBook covers] are not covers in any traditional sense: they have nothing to cover. They are icons. Signifiers. And more crucially, they're not there to sell the book directly; they are marketing material separated from the point-of-sale. Cover art only sells physical books. In an ideal world we would get rid of cover art altogether. This is probably what JD Salinger desired, in his refusal to countenance any imagery at all on his book covers ..."