I've found another article that everyone might find interesting. This one's about an apparently pretty strong gender bias in the publishing world when it comes to book covers.
I think this goes along with the earlier discussion we had about people who only read books written by men - maybe this article gives a bit of an explanation as to why that would occur. Even if it's an excellent, non-girly book, no guy is going to want to be seen reading something with a cover like those described in the article.
I'd be interested to see, with 80% of novel readers being women, what percentage of higher-ups in publishing houses are women. My guess: less than 50%.
Almost all of my favourite authors are men, and I don't think that that is really based on book covers (after all Terry Pratchett is my all-time favourite author, and I find all of his covers printed before the late 90s to be really upsetting), but whether or not I give a book a chance now is based almost exclusively on the cover and synopsis... and if it looks and sounds like girly crap, chances are that I won't pick it up.
I find I'm much the same: girly cover with pastels and half-faded pics with a lot of purple and/or busty women being bent over the table by Mr. Muscles in a kilt kinda make me want to run screaming. I look for subtlety and simplicity in my book covers, something that gives me enough of an idea of what its about without giving away the plot - or lack thereof.
Really, I want to write a trashy romance novel and then disguise it as a man-book and see how many people fall for it.
3 comments:
I think this goes along with the earlier discussion we had about people who only read books written by men - maybe this article gives a bit of an explanation as to why that would occur. Even if it's an excellent, non-girly book, no guy is going to want to be seen reading something with a cover like those described in the article.
I'd be interested to see, with 80% of novel readers being women, what percentage of higher-ups in publishing houses are women. My guess: less than 50%.
Almost all of my favourite authors are men, and I don't think that that is really based on book covers (after all Terry Pratchett is my all-time favourite author, and I find all of his covers printed before the late 90s to be really upsetting), but whether or not I give a book a chance now is based almost exclusively on the cover and synopsis... and if it looks and sounds like girly crap, chances are that I won't pick it up.
I find I'm much the same: girly cover with pastels and half-faded pics with a lot of purple and/or busty women being bent over the table by Mr. Muscles in a kilt kinda make me want to run screaming. I look for subtlety and simplicity in my book covers, something that gives me enough of an idea of what its about without giving away the plot - or lack thereof.
Really, I want to write a trashy romance novel and then disguise it as a man-book and see how many people fall for it.
Man book cover: A map with a compass on it, a few gold coins and a seemingly meaningless piece of rope.
Alternatively: a cityscape at night or a broken wine glass and some blood.
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