Remember when I blogged about African Americans on bookcovers here?
I didn’t want an African-American on my bookcover because I was worried about my sales figures. I wanted a more generic cover with scenery versus having a person on the cover.
I recently came across this blog post which tells of Bloomsbury Publishing placing a Caucasian female on the cover of a YA book, but the character in the story is really African American. Bloomsbury has stated that they did this because books that have African Americans on the cover don’t sell. However, it is deceiving to place the Caucasian on the cover when the main character in the story is Black. Bloomsbury received a lot of flack for doing this and has since changed the cover to more accurately depict the main character.
However, they did the same with yet another YA title, not depicting the character as a person of color on the cover.
It’s shocking that they did this. It would’ve made more sense to do a generic cover without people…
This Black/White book issue looks like it’s a problem that’s going to be around for a long time.
Do you think Bloomsbury was justified with what they did?
I don’t think they should have portrayed the main character as someone of another race. It’s misleading to the reader…it’s the same as lying, which I think is wrong. You don’t want to deceive the consumer…
I know I was complaining about my cover having an AA person on the cover…BUT, I would never want my publisher to place a Caucasian person on the cover when my characters are African-American! I’m pleased with my cover. I’d just heard that the books within the series that had generic covers had great sales figures. Since I’ve never seen any of the 3-in-1s with AA covers, I wasn’t sure how the sales figures would pan out since my cover is going to be “different” than the others…
I like Generic Covers for on all books… I don’t care if the characters are Caucasian.. Asian.. African-American.. whatever. But I really love to create their appearance in my mind from what I read. If the cover has a person or persons on it, then I end up with a pre-planted idea of what he/she/they look like. Make sense? Barb C.
Yes, Barb! Makes perfect sense!
I for one agree with you that it is deceitful and misleading to put a white model on a book with a black lead character. And I don’t really think that in today’s age, the race of the model on the cover would matter. This is plain discrimination, outdated thinking and boorish behavior!