Last Saturday Tim Spalding, from LibraryThing, posted about how you can use Google Book Search as a source of cover images. You can read all about it at the Thingology blog. Tim says that the code is a little rough, but it does provide a working example.

With this technique for getting book covers from Google Books, and the other well known techniques for getting book covers from Amazon, I have to wonder whether libraries will continue to pay for this type of functionality from vendors. The
Some probably will, because for reasons that still confuse me “Vendor Supported” is a phrase that carries a great deal of influence. Others won’t though.

If I was a vendor relying on this type of functionality to have customers, I’d be quite worried.