"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

[sarcasticwriter]

I was feeling sorry for Justine Larbalestier whilst reading that article until she used the word USian. Then I snapped out of it

[kattahj]

I think it's every person's duty not to be a complete asshole, including publishers. Is the bigger problem with the audience, not with the company? Sure, and that definitely needs to be addressed. But I don't think wanting to make money is an excuse to do any kind of shit imaginable - and like I said in my post, if money is the factor, then it's sane for the disagreeing consumer not to spend that money on that particular thing. I don't feel sorry for the author; she'll survive. I feel rage at a society that whitewashes the world and then acts as if pandering to racists is a sad but unavoidable by-effect of making business.

[sarcasticwriter]

Forgive me, but that's an easy view to take. You're not under pressure to maximize book-selling profits in order to maintain your livelihood. You're not staring at a recommendation from your research department that you use a white-washed book cover in order to maximize profits and (ultimately) maintain your position. You're not assessing the dangers of using a cover that will sell fewer books - an act which will harm your employer, the author, and your career.

You must remember, the publisher didn't refuse the author's content, they merely sought a way to get that content into more hands, by providing a disingenuous cover. They did so because studies indicated that the public, would buy the book if they did. That makes the public assholes, not the publisher.

In fact, if anything, using a cover that will protect the publisher's profits, the author's royalties, the marketer's career, and bring more readers to the work is a moral imperative. Get the public used to characters of different ethnicities, and eventually what's on

[kattahj]

The author isn't the injured party - the world is the injured party, particularly the people populating it who happen not to be white.

I don't think the publishers did it to be evil, but that doesn't make the deed itself any less evil. And I'm not going to feel any pity for the economic reality of people who a) chose their profession and b) most likely have paychecks a helluva lot fatter than mine.

Truth be told, I don't see any point in having discussions with you about this, since we don't tend to have any kind of philosophical or ethical ground in common.