Does judging books by their cover count? Seems like in the same vein…
In the 90s, I avoided Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series books because the Baen covers were awful, and at the time she hadn’t written books for any other publisher so I didn’t get introduced to her via that route. In the 2010s I finally read her books…and I was mad as hell that they’d put such ugly covers on them back in the day, because I would’ve been crazy about this series in the 90s!