@~ames~: There’s nothing like a group rant, eh?

@Nadia Lee:
“That’s what friends are for. Provided that they’re discreet.”
Excellent point.

If only authors did have more input! But it makes no sense for readers to blame authors for something over which they have no control. In the case of whitewashing, authors should certainly speak up, but not over every little thing.

(emphasis mine)

That’s what friends are for. Provided that they’re discreet.

There is no difference between the iPad and the iPod Touch, other than the fact that the iPad is bigger! To be honest, I think that’s a nice benefit–I liked reading books on my iPod Touch, but they were soooo small.

@Magdalen: “And all of this drama is going on against a publishing paradigm that does not give the author much, if any, say about the covers.”
Word.

@katiebabs: If only authors did have more input! But it makes no sense for readers to blame authors for something over which they have no control. In the case of whitewashing, authors should certainly speak up, but not over every little thing.

@Andrea: Oh, no! The house looks really nice in the photos you sent. I hope it all works out for the best.

@Wendy: Neither Amazon nor Macmillan came across well in this incident. I’m curious to see what other publishers will do now that Amazon has conceded defeat.

@Fiction Vixen: LOL! I try to write something which interests me at the very least, and hope it appeals to others. I think that’s all a blogger can do.

Yet all anyone seems to be focusing on is the ebook pricing aspect of this throw-down. It’s not JUST about ebook pricing. Macmillan has their head up their asses (I will concede that) but Amazon is hardly squeaky clean in this whole drama by throwing their weight around and bullying at the expense of their customers.

Yeah – which means the St. Martin’s Minotaur title I just reviewed on my blog has links over to B&N – so, you know, readers can buy the book should they want to. Novel idea that.

Today Jeanine sent me a map from her friend of the acceptable streets I can live on. The street my house is on is one street north of the acceptable area. So I emailed my realtor an hour ago that I was ready make an offer.

Meanwhile, a coworker emailed a friend in that area that said the area has really gone downhill in the last 5-10 years with a lot of section 8 housing (I guess welfare – so people that don’t care of the state of the neighborhood).

I’m exhausted and it’s only 10 a.m.. And too embarassed to call the realtor and tell her to hold off again.

That’s what I’ve been up to. Thanks for asking.

As for the whitewashing of covers, I believe if authors had more input on their covers, this wouldn’t be a big problem.

Let’s start with the common sense: If the protagonist in the book is black/brown/multi-racial/aboriginal/First Nations Peoples/anything else non-white, then the picture on the cover should not be of a white person. Ever.

Marketing, next: If the research shows — and I don’t know whether it does or it doesn’t — that books with non-white people on the cover sell predominantly to non-white people (in fact, let’s speculate they sell predominantly to the group that is pictured on the cover), which dramatically reduces the sales, then there could be a reason ($$) for publishers to whitewash covers. But still — see Common Sense, above.

The answer is to leave the protagonist(s) off the cover, but then you run into the problem of a cover that has no particular connection to the story, and we’ve seen recently that authors may be expected to contact their publishers about that.

And all of this drama is going on against a publishing paradigm that does not give the author much, if any, say about the covers.

I think the dialogue about cover art is a good one, but to suggest that the author has a moral imperative to “do something” about a whitewashed cover is like accusing a gun manufacturer of murder when one of its guns is used to kill someone. Once the author signs that contract to have Big Pub publish the book — a deal that is made, obviously, before there is any art work to consider — virtually all leverage the author has ceases. So maybe we admire the moral virtue of an author willing to jump up & down yelling about racism, but a) it’s not necessarily going to help, and b) we don’t always know when it’s happening and when it isn’t, and c) there’s a much more obvious target: Big Pub itself.

It’s makes perfect sense that it was Delamore that took all the heat for the two racially-misleading YA covers. They deserved it.