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‘Never judge a book by its cover,’ goes the popular English idiom. Contrary to this axiom, judging a book by its cover design is a guilty pleasure all self-confessed bibliophiles and book lovers have indulged in at some point or the other.
Book covers have a way of calling out to us – begging us to pick up a book and leisurely leaf through its contents or sneak a glance at the blurb on the back. Whether it is a strategically placed color-blocked graphic design, seemingly innocent play with elements of typography, doodle renditions, captivating visual pictographs or illustrations that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye – book jackets command attention and how! An exceptional and eye-catching cover design is the subliminal force behind subtle book recall and its ensuing success, in most cases.
A lot of innovation and creativity is happening, says Ravi Deecee, CEO of DC Books, adding the Kerala-based publisher has experimented with book covers. “We try to work with creative individuals to add that edge to our cover designs,” he said, adding they hold discussions with the in-house team of artists and illustrators and brainstorm on how to make the covers stand out.
Govind DeeCee, editorial director of DC Books, said they have done multiple campaigns on YouTube. During the Covid-19 pandemic, 23 April 2020, DC Books was one of the first publishers to do a virtual book festival online with live discussions with authors on Facebook and YouTube.
“We did an interesting exercise on YouTube where we conducted a workshop with authors who were in the process of writing their novels. We discussed how we could shape the novels that they were writing into a printable manuscript,” Govind said. “We paired them up with an author and asked each one to contribute a chapter. The author contributed the initial chapter. The other chapters were contributed by each of the authors in the following episodes with DC Books doing the editing to maintain consistency. The author who started the series contributed the last chapter.”
DC Books compiled a crime story based on this exercise where they had one established writer and nine upcoming authors who hadn’t been published. Every day on YouTube, DC Books would release one chapter of this compilation. The exercise went on for three weeks with each author reading his or her chapter. The book was ultimately published with a letter from the original contributing author, which was not published on YouTube. That book did very well, Govind DeeCee said.
For the Malayalam edition (Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil) of On The Banks of the Mayyazhi by M Mukundan, which was originally published in 1974, and turned 50 this year, they did an interesting exercise – publishing 1,000 copies with a blank cover and just the title of the book at the top in the year 2018. Each copy had a unique hand-painted cover. All the covers were connected to the text within the book. The collector’s editions were a hit with readers, Govind Deecee said.
Another book, Thalamurakal by OV Vijayan, originally published in 1991-1992, had unique covers. The designs were made by physical materials embossed on a printed cover, “The process of designing a cover is a conversation in itself. Bhaskaran, a well known artist was commissioned to do 2000 different covers for the first print of 2000 copies. Each book was considered as a piece of art by readers. We have conversations with Bhaskaran that we can evolve a cover. For some of the bestsellers, we have the mantra- don’t change the cover unless you have to”, said Govind Deecee.
“We designed a book cover for the Malayalam translation of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. We wanted a gothic font for the title of the book in Malayalam and we went to the extent of creating a typography for the text in gothic font,” he shared.
Another interesting project was for the Malayalam translation of the book Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. In 2022, DC Books did a unique project with one of its bestselling authors, Benyamin, where the chapters of the novel could be read in any order and one could still understand it, Ravi Deecee said. “To make it even more fun, we made the book with 120 chapters with each chapter being a single page or two sides of the page at the most.”
“We created a box that opens like a book and in it, we placed 120 chapters of Tharakan’s Grandhavari as individually printed cards. We made sure every copy coming out of the press had a unique arrangement of chapters so that no two copies would be similar,” said Siddarth Deecee, director- Marketing & Sales. DC Books did one edition of 4,000 books in that format and all 4,000 copies were preordered and sold in one month. “If we can lend the design to the structure that the author wants, we will go that distance,” he concluded.
