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seriousficBecause they figured out the fucking plain brown wrapper principle.
Cover guys, short test. Before you approve a cover design, think to yourself "would this get me funny looks if I were reading it on the bus?" Clearly, someone failed to do this simple test when they designed the dust jacket to the James Bond compilation I got from the library.
Sidebar: My library, in-between budgeting to get TPBs of Anita Blake (you know, if you must have Laurell K. Hamilton, why not at least get the original books? You're a library, stop humiliating yourself!), has this automated check-out system you can use. It saves the librarians from having to do their job and it saves you from the feeling of "oh no, I'm checking out five Star Wars books, quick, add The Handmaid's Tale to the stack so I look like I have a social conscience instead of just an aching need to find out the fate of Mara Jade." Bad for Margaret Atwood, good for you.
End sidebar. Now, I'm not in favor of censorship, but when the entirety of the art design on your book is "woman be naked," I really have to cry foul. And it's a library book, so I can't take the dust jacket off. I get it, James Bond, beautiful girls, but for god's sake, throw in some fast cars, playing cards, guns, SOMETHING to keep me from looking like I have a perverse sexual lust for beautiful women... I do, but it's not something I care to announce via my reading habits.
I get that sex sells, but we need a scale of acceptibility. In the Hollows series, "heroine is a blurb-designated sexy witch person" (although I always do wonder who she's supposed to be sexy too, vis a vie the target audience. Is she supposed to be sexy to straight women who like to read about her having sex with men or straight men who are going to end up with a serious case of blueballs when she never thinks to get with the lesbian vampire or... what? If she were meant to appeal to lesbians, I'm pretty sure there would be more Xena mentions) thus equals woman with stripper tat who can't find a shirt that covers her midriff, a bit of character development that is clearly more important than things like vampires, werewolves, or anything else that might make the cover. That clears it. But those LKH covers which are just some chick's belly covered with rose petals or whatever, those have got to go!
Cover guys, short test. Before you approve a cover design, think to yourself "would this get me funny looks if I were reading it on the bus?" Clearly, someone failed to do this simple test when they designed the dust jacket to the James Bond compilation I got from the library.
Sidebar: My library, in-between budgeting to get TPBs of Anita Blake (you know, if you must have Laurell K. Hamilton, why not at least get the original books? You're a library, stop humiliating yourself!), has this automated check-out system you can use. It saves the librarians from having to do their job and it saves you from the feeling of "oh no, I'm checking out five Star Wars books, quick, add The Handmaid's Tale to the stack so I look like I have a social conscience instead of just an aching need to find out the fate of Mara Jade." Bad for Margaret Atwood, good for you.
End sidebar. Now, I'm not in favor of censorship, but when the entirety of the art design on your book is "woman be naked," I really have to cry foul. And it's a library book, so I can't take the dust jacket off. I get it, James Bond, beautiful girls, but for god's sake, throw in some fast cars, playing cards, guns, SOMETHING to keep me from looking like I have a perverse sexual lust for beautiful women... I do, but it's not something I care to announce via my reading habits.
I get that sex sells, but we need a scale of acceptibility. In the Hollows series, "heroine is a blurb-designated sexy witch person" (although I always do wonder who she's supposed to be sexy too, vis a vie the target audience. Is she supposed to be sexy to straight women who like to read about her having sex with men or straight men who are going to end up with a serious case of blueballs when she never thinks to get with the lesbian vampire or... what? If she were meant to appeal to lesbians, I'm pretty sure there would be more Xena mentions) thus equals woman with stripper tat who can't find a shirt that covers her midriff, a bit of character development that is clearly more important than things like vampires, werewolves, or anything else that might make the cover. That clears it. But those LKH covers which are just some chick's belly covered with rose petals or whatever, those have got to go!
