When we browse the cover of a creative book, we mostly link the content of this book with its carefully photographed or artistically drawn cover, and we seek to link what the cover symbolizes and what it indicates of connotations, which may be related to the biography of the author himself and his personal life, or may be related to a certain incident that the content of the book leans on, or at least may point to the place, reality or country. 

The covers of creative books vary, in a way that may differ from poetry, story, novel, play, or critical literary book. 

Ancient books did not come in beautiful covers and dazzling designs, and there was no interest in the cover. With the emergence of the printing revolution and the creativity of designers, books appeared elegantly and in a creative form, and the reader became very interested in the cover, which made publishers and writers take the book cover into account when printing.

Studies confirm that the book cover possesses a pivotal importance. It is the first thing that appears to the reader... and the eye always loves the beautiful attractive view. The limits of the matter reach for some, indicating that the book cover has become at our present time, in light of the technological and digital artistic development, representing 85% of the book's value and role; it is a source of its content sources, as it completes and crowns the contextual richness, giving it touches and glimpses of suspense, attraction, and artistic quality."

Book Popularity: 

The book cover is an entry to its content, and it may be a reason for its popularity and success or even failure. In the latter case, this happens in the case of designing a book cover without the designer reviewing its content, or when he chooses colors, images and drawings that are uncomfortable for the eye, or elements that do not harmonize with each other, and which do not collectively form an attractive and distinctive cover.
The art of designing book covers is one of the streams of graphic design, and it is an old art, but it was updated with the emergence of modern technology and its revolution that brought about a big change in the standards of book design.
Since the eighteenth century until today, book covers have seen major changes. After books were published as a group of papers without a cover, they were published in the 19th century with simple decoration with white cardboard, then illustrated drawings are added on them, so that the cover develops with time little by little.

Book covers can be divided into two parts:

The first part: covers that take images or drawings from places and express the target subject with a pictorial indication.

The second part: covers that rely on painted artistic works symbolizing the written work, or express with a color abstract connotation, or are drawn at random and have no relationship with the book content. 

Cover Varieties:

In the first part, we see many publications expressing the place, the event or the author's biography, and from these works:

(Raven's Leg) by the novelist Yahya Amqasem, where he captured the small mountain piece from the Tihama mountains in the south of the Kingdom which resembles a raven's leg, and placed it as a painting on the novel's cover, and (Ghosts of Deserted Alleys) by Dr. Turki Al-Hamad where scenes from the Eastern Region and Riyadh were placed on the novel covers in its three parts: Al-Karadeeb, Al-Adama, Al-Shumaisi (and Al-Shumaisi is a neighborhood of old Riyadh) and Abdul Rahim Al-Ahmadi places an image of (Wadi Al-Ashraq) in the Medina region as a cover for his novel carrying the same name, as Ibrahim Shuhabi places a scene of one of the old houses in Asir on the cover of his novel: "Basil Basins".

These scenes aspire to be more expressive of a memory or event, or the place of birth and upbringing. The novelist does not choose an image of a building with a modern architectural style or an image of a city or resort unless the novel requires that, but he es to capture an old memory or image to give the novel its temporal dimension that invokes the past and shapes it in the present moment or moments of the future as if he says to the reader implicitly: from here was the beginning.

However, most of the covers of novels took symbolic shapes, and simple signs that point to the work content like the covers of novels: Al-Asfouria by Dr. Ghazi Al-saibi which took the form of a chaotic library and a chaotic desk on which a group of writing and medical tools were scattered, and let us say that about many novels: Love Affairs of Al-Asha Street by Badriya Al-Bishr, and (Girls of Riyadh) by Raja Al-Sanea, and (Throwing Sparks) by Abdo Khal, and (Al-Ibrizi Valleys) by Khalid Al-Youssef. and other novels. 

Symbolism of Poetry Covers: 

Because poetry rises in its essence on what is suggestive and symbolic, and the poet does not aspire – except in some national general topics or occasional ones for example – for disclosure and direct writing, the covers of poetry collections come to distill the symbolic and abstract state in pointing to what the poems inside the collection contain. If the love poetry collections of a romantic character focus on hearts, flowers, seas, stars, moons and nature, then poetry that takes refuge in what is symbolic or addresses multiple human topics es to invoking symbolic covers, and we find that for example in the collections: Sunset Garden, A House, and Lady of the Moons by Ghazi Al-saibi, and Saad Al-Humaidein (And for the Ashes Its Mornings) and Hassan Al-Zahrani (Similitude) and (Overflow of Feelings) and Dr. Abdulaziz Khoja (One Hundred and One Poems for the Moon) and other poetry collections whose covers are dominated by captures and symbolic color signs. 

In the covers of stories, plays and literary and critical books, the captures are more touching to the content of stories which may be dominated by a social character, portraits and scenes of daily life, according to what the marketing of the story or play work requires. As for critical books, they are characterized by the seriousness of the cover and its engineering for what it carries of theoretical or applied critical content as we see in the books of Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadami, Dr. Saad Al-Bazei, Dr. Aali Sarhan Al-Qurashi, Dr. Moajeb Al-Zahrani, Dr. Mansour Al-Hazimi, Dr. Sultan Al-Qahtani, Dr. Fatima Al-Wuhaibi, Muhammad Al-Qashami, Hussein Ba-Faqih, Dr. Saleh Ziad, Dr. Hassan Al-Nu'mi and others. 

We find symbolic covers appearing at times as in the collection (Tremor of Their White Robes) and (My Brother Searches for Rimbaud) and (That Cunning Hand)  by Youssef Al-Muhaimeed, and (Small and Soft Nails) and (A Postponed Being) by Fahd Al-Atiq, and (To You Some of My Sides) and (The Ultimate Is the Female's Scent) by Khalid Al-Youssef, and (Who Sings in This Night) by Abdo Khal. 

Perhaps the covers of creative books in the Kingdom are still far from capturing daily scenes of reality movement, or pointing to the beauty of places in the Kingdom, but there are many conditions that may impose mechanisms for marketing the book and the presence of rare images and images of places which the Kingdom is full of witnessing a dense and rich diversity. 

The closest field for covers is the symbolic field. For this reason, it may be the most widespread in editing covers and their formulations, just as the cover may coincide with the title sometimes. However, commemorative documentary images and rare images especially in memoir books remain the most attractive given their rarity and specificity, and perhaps leave an impact in the reader's reception of the book, but symbolic drawings are an open space suitable for all books and all readers.