[Literature] This week, it’s come to light how publishers are doing terrible things with book covers in order to ensure that their books are bought. Readers do judge books by their covers, after all, and even those who do not can’t help but have one book’s cover attract their initial attention before another.
The first case I head this week was of poor Justine Larbalestier and the cover of her book Liar. Liar is told by a black protagonist, but is instead introduced on the cover by a very light-skinned girl that doesn’t resemble the protagonist at all.
“Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white?”
Meanwhile, another book’s cover misleads the reader into thinking Dan Brown wrote the book, one he had no part in producing, by listing his name on the cover in print larger than the actual author’s. So is the case with Dan Brown’s Simon Kernick’s Deadline.
It’s unfortunate, but we may take a page out of the publisher’s book — haha! — and also take advantage of such a gaffe: over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books they are holding a photoshop contest in light of Deadline’s disgraceful cover, inviting readers to try their hands at exploiting famous people to sell others’ books.
