(What if).. Books didn't have covers?

REPRESENTATION

There is no doubt that a book cover is more than the bodyguard of a book. One of its important jobs is to represent the book and its contents in the right way.

Very often authors do not really have an idea for their covers. Just like me. In traditional publishing, the publisher's marketing team handles the covers. In self-publishing too, the creator tries to find a cover more marketable than suitable. What makes a book attractive? And does that attractiveness represent the book in the right light?

A cover is a receptacle, sometimes transparent and sometimes too manipulative. You just have to open it up to see what's contained in there. Or it has to be labelled right. That's how the first impression of a book is said to be good.

In India, I grew up watching American pop culture on television. I've watched sitcoms, to movies and music videos. I remember watching them and falling in love with every pop icon. But I did feel the difference. Not of the themes, but of the stereotypes. One, the fact that we as Indians were not represented in the correct limelight - the accent, food, etc. Two, there was virtually no one of my skin tone on there. And the ones that were invisibly being portrayed were this stereotypical, unreal versions of me or us. They didn't speak like me at all.

In the same way, what if a book is represented in a way that doesn't speak the reality of the book's contents?

The cover of a book or more of the design or objects on a book cover is sort of like a teaser. The colour, designs, ideas, objects, etc. all contribute to the right representation of it. All of these together somewhat become the metamorphosis of the book. But only if presented in the right manner.

But representation is often based on stereotypes with an effort to show something that's different. This is done to show the readers/audience to have a certain type of impression of something that's unusual to a particular batch of the audience. In other words, representation is simplified to be a certain way, which may or may not be true.

In the first essay of Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Clothing Of Books", she talks about uniformity in books too as a solution to misrepresentation or resentment towards her book covers. I don't necessarily buy that idea. But honestly, it wouldn't be that bad to adopt such a thing. There are books and publishers and stores that keep and make books accordingly, to their colours in the sense that some authors have their own standard colours to be used in a book. Some of them even have custom fonts. If you see the vintage collection of random house, which I find in Crossword bookstore here, you'll see all these books like As You Like It, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, etc. in a very standard and simple colour with very basic designs like a peacock feather or leaves or just lines in the background. The fonts of these books are usually simple. And this uniformity looks good too.

Charlotte Strick is an Art Designer/Editor who has been in the business for quite a long time. Her experience is gigantic and she mentions in the interview that she has to read the entire book to confirm what the cover will be or look like. Imagine That!

What happens, on Wattpad anyways is when you ask someone to help put together a cover for your book the designer only asks for the synopsis of the book and the standard question of all, "What do you want on the cover?" And even with all the descriptions, the cover of the book is sometimes so different than what was asked that it kills the vibe of the book.

So I'll ask the eponymous question, what if books didn't have covers? Wait, let me rephrase that. "What if all the books were misrepresented or were manipulative?"

***