It is a good week for the publishing industry :), and for author Justine Larbalestier.Last week, you may remember that I posted "Cover Wars: When Cover Art Goes Wrong" expressing my surprise and outrage over the fact that Bloomsbury picked a white model for the cover of a book with a black main character because "black covers don't sell."
Well, a week later, I'm giving Bloomsbury kudos for making things right and doing a full blown photo shoot to correct the cover! Also, a huge congratulations to Justine for sticking by her guns and fighting for this change.
Sometimes it's amazing and humbling to realize that a group of voices on the internet can promote change like this. When we band together, we can actually right injustices and change things for the better. (We can also organize city-wide zombie walks, but that's beside the point.)
The best part about this is that all the hoopla over this cover issue is probably going to throw a lot of fantastic publicity the author's way, boosting sales for the new cover. Maybe now we'll have a recorded case of a black cover selling better than it's white counterpart. Stats prove that black covers sell!
Even if that doesn't happen, I think we've witnessed something very cool going down because of an author and her readers saying "enough is enough" :). Hooray!
What do you guys think about all of this? Did you follow the controversy these past couple of weeks?
10 comments:
That's awesome! Glad everything worked out, and you're right. She's getting incredible publicity over this. Good for her!
I'm not certain there wasn't a master plan in all of this...that some marketing genius at Bloomsbury isn't sitting in a back corner somewhere laughing maniacally at us (all the way to the bank).
Still, I do appreciate the new cover and them doing the right thing.
Hmmmmm... interesting point. Maybe we've all been duped!
Curse you, Bloomsbuuuuuryyyyy! *shakes fist*
So glad to see Justine got the cover her book should have had in the first place. Marketing ploy or not, I'll head over to Borders and buy a copy!
That's just crazy that they did that in the first place. I'm glad they made it right though.
I'm glad they did the right thing. And the cover looks great!!
Nathan Bransford mentioned this, I think. Very cool that the author had the cahones to say something--and that the publishers did something about it.
It's good that its changed and is a more accurate representation of the story.
I just love that new cover! Amazing how easy it was to take that same concept and make it right for the book. Makes me wonder why they didn't do that in the first place...
I agree1 It s GREAT news and nice to think that bloggers had a hand in it.
Post a Comment