Wow that's a lovely story about how you discovered Sanderson and his works, I wish mine was anywhere as meaningful to me but life would be boring anyway if we all did things the same way and at least we all did find Sanderson in the end.
The book covers certainly helped as I tend to mooch around 2 or 3 bookstores once or twice a week when I'm on my lunch break and something about the cover for Way Of Kings and The Final Empire just kept catching my eye whenever I was in there, after that it was the blurb for the first Mistborn book that seemed so intriguing that I thought why not and picked up
It doesn't take much for someone like Sanderson to hook you with his work and that first book well and truly hooked me and now a few years and many books later I'm truly and addict who is just extremely grateful to love such a prolific author