Covers, marketing, authenticity
When Justine sent me the US cover for her upcoming book, Liar, she added, “I hate it.”
“Why?” I wrote back. “Faces are visually arresting! The black and white photo is striking!”
“The protagonist isn’t white,” she replied.
Thud.
“OH,” I said.
Book covers that portray non-white protagonists as white are nothing new. But because the black protagonist is a compulsive liar, this cover actually changes the way people are reading the story. Justine writes, “One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true.”
Bloomsbury’s publishing director comes back with ‘we meant to do that’:
“I do think it’s going to raise awareness of race in teen literature to new levels,” said Cecka. “Clearly, our striving for ambiguity with this cover, and for it to be interpreted as a ‘lie’ itself didn’t work for everyone. But again, if this jacket proves a catalyst for a bigger discussion about how the industry is dealing with its books on race, that’s a very large good to come of this current whirlwind.”
Whether this strategy works for them remains to be seen. It is getting a lot of attention. Those sites are doing a great job of discussing the race issues, so I won’t go into that here. However, the Liar cover is also a reminder that marketing is not just about selling things. It’s also about setting expectations for the buyer.
Think about Apple’s iPhones. You’ve seen the ads: the disembodied hand flicking through the music library, turning the screen to see a video, answering a phone call. Would the phone have sold as well if buyers had found that it didn’t really work like that once they got their hands on it? I don’t think so. Apple’s ads were great not just because they showed something cool, but because the product they were selling actually was cool.
Book covers are not the only things that set expectations. Websites do, too. One of my favorite science fiction authors, who writes gritty, realistic stories full of psychologically damaged characters, has an inexplicably flowery website. Take her work or leave it, but those books are not all hearts and butterflies! We’ve argued with authors over the artwork they wanted to use on their websites, if they wanted to use it because it was pretty, or they liked it, or their family friend created it. If the art doesn’t also give the reader a reasonably accurate impression of the kind of book they’re selling her, then none of those reasons is good enough to justify its use.
To create a happy reader, you have to get her attention, make her want to buy the book, and fulfill (or exceed) her expectations. Marketing covers the first two; the rest is between the pages. A book’s marketing needs to be in sync with its contents, and an author’s brand needs to reflect the style of her work.
Authors might not have control over their covers, but they do have control over their websites. That might be cold comfort when a reader questions a protagonist because of the cover art, but at least in the online realm, it’s also empowering. This is the part you can fix. This is where you can get it right.
(Update, August 6: They fixed it.)
