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I walked into a bookstore last night. Apart from the Fantastic Planet bookshop, this is the first time I have done so in a very long time. I was killing time before the movie, and books managed to outweigh the need for a beer. Weird, I know. :-)
So. I went to look at books. And there's an entire wall - shelf of paranormal devils, demons, humans, vampires, mythological predators of humans, erotica. My goodness. An entire wall shelf. I was amused. They are all black, and they are all iconic, and I loved them all. Except for the bit where they all looked the same. I found this wall under the heading of "Horror" and "Science Fiction/Fantasy". So I also perused the SFF sections too - but I bought an erotic devil thing, and do you know why?
It had a male torso showing on the spine of the book. It's the ONLY book that stood out from the SFF section simply because it had a naked man on the side. Every book is now black! Every book is now iconic! Every book has a simple colour to highlight the icon! if a book was by someone I knew or heard of even from under my rock, then I may have noted that, and then moved on. Some had pics of girls' faces on the side, but they didn't pique my interest. They don't look like me, they don't show anything in common with me other than 2 eyes, a nose, and a mouth. And some hair. I am a woman. I'm interested in other stuff too. Slogans on the front saying how great the book was and how much like Buffy it was, all in the same breath, are not a selling point for me. Doomed to wander the earth without any emotions? That was starting line for a teaser. Bored before I even got to the second line. (I did read it. I just don't remember what it said!)
Some of my favourite romance novels have men on the spines too. Now I am starting to wonder if that's how *I* choose to buy a random book. And, the other thing? A big deal-clencher... it was $12.95.
I bought a random book from a random bookshop for the first time in ... quite possibly decades. And of course, I couldn't just do it. I was finding my own responses to various attempts to catch my eye fascinating.I was also looking at the covers pretty intently after Sarah's post about them for her own book. YA covers look a LOT like erotica novels these days. Eeep!
So, yeah. I bought a book. I also bought the Colour of Magic omnibus with the Light Fantastic. Eh, the TP collection always needs finishing after all.
I am thinking now about the covers with faces on them. Do faces on covers help people to make a choice between books to purchase? Faces convey so much data without any intent to do so - so what else are they supposed to convery, when they are supposed to? Is the artist narrowing down their intended market by showing pictures of slim, beautiful heroines? or even worse, doing so when after reading the book you discover a normal-looking, normal sized heroine inside, and then feel cheated because (in my case) that's the book you wanted and her appearance as 'normal' should be celebrated not changed into 'beautiful' or (in possibly other's cases) feel cheated because you don't want to read about boring chicks, you only want to read about perfect pretty chicks who kick ass? If you have a prety 16 - 19 year old on the cover, do 20 - 34 year olds identify with her or view her as a rival, or even a child?
Anyway, I have a lot of the Colour of Magic to get through before the kids notice I am missing again, so... yeah. There you go. And I bet you all thought this might be a bad joke or something.
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Date: 2009-01-14 05:42 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 05:57 am (UTC)From:we can make you an awesome cover in any colour you like :)
anyway, I am in an internet cafe, not on my own computer, but I will see if I can work out how to get chat going--if I can't I will talk to you on friday :)