"Liar" by Justine Larbalestier

So if you guys know anything that’s been going around the Young Adult (YA) world lately you know about this controversy surrounding the book Liar by Justine Larbalestier. Basically what’s happening is that the main protagonist in the book is an African American or otherwise black female, while the cover displays a white, Caucasian female. This has sort of caused an uproar in the YA community because people are really beginning to question covers, and what publishers will do to make books seem more ‘marketable’.

In her original blog post: Ain’t That a Shame, Justine explains that authors usually do not get any say in their covers. This holds true usually for what appears to be one reason: authors are not graphic designers. They usually have no experience in knowing what will sell to people, which is why they have no say. And apparently according to publishers, black covers do not sell as well as white covers.

Now this could be entirely true. They could have a million different statistics that show that black covers do not sell as much, but is that all that really matters in publishing these days? I know that the publishing market is dwindling as less and less people appear to be reading, but I think there needs to be a cut off point as to how far publishers will go.

But here’s the thing, as important as covers are, how many people these days ACTUALLY judge a book based on it’s cover? The last three books I bought were: The Time Traveler’s Wife, How to Grow a Novel, and A Clockwork Orange. Why did I buy them? Well, I bought The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger because I saw the movie trailer and thought it was a good concept. I bought How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein because I heard from Kaleb Nation that it was an excellent writing book. Lastly, I bought A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess because I asked my brother what book to buy and he suggested that one.

I did not buy any of those books for their covers. In fact I didn’t even know what the covers looked like until I saw them on the amazon.ca page. And the next few books I’m going to buy is because a.) a friend recommended them, b.) I like the author, or c.) I see another movie trailer and think I must have it.

So in the case of Liar would having a book with a black female really take away from their costs? Is it really that important that the cover looks pretty and nice?

Then again, race is not the only thing publishers like to disregard these days when it comes to covers. A lot of the times, as pointed out by Maureen Johnson in her blogTV today, women authors typically tend to have more girly covers than male authors.

I know that I would really dislike it if the cover for my book that I’m planning was geared only towards females. My book is an urban fantasy, and I feel it is not geared to any sex in particular. Although I am a girl, I usually never like girly things. Like when I was young, I would be playing with my brother’s toy cars instead of my barbies. Now, I play violent video games (like Gears of War for instance) because they’re more fun than Nintendogs.

I guess the ultimate question is what makes a book sell? Is it the cover? Is it word of mouth? Is it movies? In my opinion, a fancy cover is nice, but people don’t read a book because it has a fancy cover. They read a book because they want to know the story inside (and/or are forced to read the book by school systems).

Question for the Comments: Why do you buy the books you buy? (i.e. based off cover, because of a friend recommends them, etc)