Let's be real, we all judge a book by its cover to some degree. It may be what draws us in initially or turns us off. if a book has an awful, cheap cover you got to think it reflects on the quality of the work inside. Just take a look at /r/TerribleBookCovers and you rarely see any quality works of literature over there. It's not always the case and sometimes you just get someone's weird idea of art or some design aspects that were trendy at the time of publication but generally speaking, cheap outside, cheap inside. Description, first few pages, random page reading, I give all a go and if it's good enough, despite a lacking cover, I'll give it a try.