"Well, maybe she's just PRETENDING to be black," or, further news in whitewashing

[kattahj]

(Thank you ajodasso for alerting me to this piece of fail)

Okay. So. Book covers are often crap, we know that. Swedish publishers EBFA for one seem to take an honour in soaking up excellent YA novels and republishing them with boring and/or abstract covers teens wouldn't look twice at. Nothing new there.

But when the cover changes not only the looks but

Comments

[sundayscat]

"They wanted to illustrate it with a photo of a veiled woman carrying an automatic rifle."

WTF? Good of your dad to not go along with it.

[kattahj]

It's really unbelievable - and this is Sweden's most respected encyclopedia. People suck so hard.

[artaxastra]

As you say, the author of a book can't pull the article. At the point you see the cover, the book is long since sold, paid for, and in production. My most recent cover was produced more than two years after the contract was fulfilled. It is legally impossible to do anything about it, and showing the cover to the author is a courtesy.

[kattahj]

Yeah. As I understand it, it's technically possible for an author to get veto rights, but it pretty much doesn't happen - most are lucky to even get input.

[alara_r]

What I found really stupid, in reading about it on that blog article you linked to, was the publisher perception that white people won't read books by black authors

[kattahj]

I'm kind of surprised that there even is a black people ghetto - our bookstores usually have separate sections for fantasy, sci-fi, crime, and possibly horror, but that's about it. (I do remember a library having a section for "entertainment", which, bwuh? If the other books aren't entertaining, why have them? Esp. since Anna Karenina was in the entertainment section...) To have the books by black people shelved as "urban" seems even stranger, because what if they're not urban? Toni Morrison's books aren't urban...

I'm reminded of a Swedish author who said apropos the word "kvinnoböcker" = "women's books" - "What are women's books? Children's books are books for children, doctor books are books about doctors, debute books are books by debutants, but women's books? Some books by women are about women, some books about women are for women, but it's just some." Shelving books as "black" books seems to have the same problem.

[lilacsigil]

Good on your dad! I think Justine Larbalestier's response is excellent, too, and as strong as she can make it. If it's not books getting sectioned off into "special interest" on their cover art, it's openly racist pictures being added to what I expect is a perfectly sane article. Aaarrgh.

[kattahj]

I think it's depressing that the publishing industry works like this, but it's good that there's at least a stir about it.

[archbishopm]

I imagine as a youngster I'd've avoided that book on account of my rule that the more prominent the human face(s) on the cover of the book/movie the duller the read/watch. ;-p

[kattahj]

Heh. I don't recall there being very many prominent faces on books when I was a kid - usually there were full- or half-figure people or scenes of some sort. I would quite possibly have avoided the Australian cover for just having words. But then, I read almost everything, so it'd depend on the context as well. I can't recall seeing very many of those covers as a kid either, though - I think both kinds are a newer trend. (Trying to think of a good cover, Maria Gripe's books come to mind, especially ...och de vita skuggorna i skogen with its barely glimpsed women among the trees.)