Black Covers

In September 2004, Doubleday published a special 21st anniversary edition hardcover of The Colour of Magic. The dustjacket’s cover was mostly black, save for a monochromatic photograph of the lid of a chest, with gold coins in colour on top. (There was also a limited edition of one thousand signed slipcase editions, which did not have the dustjacket.) The cover design was possibly influenced by the success of the similar “adult cover” editions of the Harry Potter novels from around the same time, but certainly to counter the perceived reluctance of adults to be seen reading books with cartoony or “childish” covers.

Corgi published an edition in B-format paperback with the same cover, and then went on to publish matching paperback editions of nearly every subsequent Discworld novel. The last was Raising Steam in 2017, meaning the edition is almost complete - only missing The Last Hero and The Shepherd's Crown. Matching editions have also been published of Good Omens and Nation.

Versions of these covers were also used for CD editions of many Discworld novels. Unusually, they are not just for one edition of the audiobooks - they appear to have been used for both the abridged Corgi audiobooks read by Tony Robinson, and also some of the unabridged Isis Books, read primarily by Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs.