Saturday, July 12, 2014

Books With (Almost) Identical Covers

Imagine if all book covers are black, and the titles and the authors' names are printed in white. There is no visual language, no identity, no warmth, no genial introduction. 

And the feeling is not different when we see books with covers of the same shade, images, and layout.
While we can predict how this curious trend in book fashion would hurt the marketing and branding efforts for both the authors and their books, nothing is more painful than seeing one of the reasons why many still prefer the printed books to e-books disappear just because there is not enough creative bleeding for the affair of art and literature.

Or there are lazy people. Those who do not want us to enjoy a trip to a bookstore, where our first experience of the book is made of its color, its texture, its being too abstract or being too blunt, its being glittery or being mysterious. Because we know that the cover is, like the human eyes, the window to the book's soul.
So when these "windows" disappoint us, we judge them from the front cover to the back:




Don't get me wrong. The story is still the life of every book. But a great "hello" the first time the readers' eyes meet the book can make the memories and feelings brought by the pages, in between the covers, more difficult to forget.

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