A handful of readers of some of the essays in this book asked me, why did I write about book covers?

The answer to that question is simple to talk about but rather complex to explain. Can a book cover be this traumatizing?

Yes, is an easy answer. No is easier. But book covers have not just been my favourite eye candy as a reader but also a source of torment as a writer.

I remember completing my first book on Wattpad, a poetry collection "Notes From The Heart" and right after I was ready to upload it, I'd see the app asking for a cover. That's when it'd kick me that I had to manage to fix a cover for my book. And so I had to hold the release of the book for one more day, until and unless I'd find a really well suited cover for it.

The covers for that book has since been changed a dozen of times. The first one was just a black background, written on it in white. But that was scrutinized by my friends. So I changed it. And then again. And again. And again because every time I had a new reader approach my book, they'd complain about the book cover. I finally settled with a cover that is now used as the cover for it's paperback version, which also by the way isn't necessarily "made" by me. After seven to eight months of my book's release I saw that two to three more books had the same cover. But I never got around changing it.

This behaviour followed with my other books as well. And every time it was disappointing. Where the book cover should be a bridge between me and the readers, it simply acted as a wall, seizing the view towards it, people looking at the wall and walking away; complaining about the book cover.

And it has always been the same, two years and six books later. The cover has always been a stimuli, more of an irritant. It has always kept my relationship with my books and it's readers distant, broken and almost non existent. And I have always been taken by it all, by the too much of it, by the mainstream idea of book covers.

When people ask me why write this book, I simply want to say that I just want to obliterate the power that covers have over me and my work. Writing this book is an act of wrecking the wall, it's an act of catering presence into my work, bridging the gap between two artistic worlds. I can only be one artist at a time. That's my limit.

And of all the covers I've ever made, it's all an act of putting into this book what I tried to put into all those covers. It's the same thing.

The covers of "Notes From The Heart", "Sea Full Of Stars", "The World Was Built For Two" or "The Interpreter" were all in sense the frame of reference in this book. In fact the cover of this very book on Wattpad has been changed several times.

And I do not dismiss any pretty or attractive or shiny covers. I, in every sound of my mind am aware of how essential they are in the metamorphic process of my books as well as their marketing. What I dismiss is the senselessness of it, the non-artistic reference to the writings on the papers in the book.

Before I started writing, I lacked faith in everything including myself. I'm not a lost person with dual or no identity. But feeling lost has not just to do with who I am or where I'm from. I started writing to find perspective, to make this empty heaviness from within me go away. I fill that space with words.

But every time, the jackets of my own books whether pretty or tame bring me back to square one.

Why do I write? Words. They lift me, inspire me. I write to facilitate myself with my deepest emotions. Hence, my books are my babies. Imagine not being able to cloth your own child, a right so obvious taken away from you or something you can't do properly.

And so writing this book does answer the eponymous question, but many more. Writing this book may not release me from my relationship with book jackets but it will definitely make it easier to bare and understand. It will change, but never go away.

***********