Hey hey! It’s Wednesday!
Honestly, this is my least favorite time in New England. My allergies are still present, but there’s also a bit of a heat wave. And, if you live in the area, you know that central air isn’t super common in houses. Fun!
I am just a sweaty mess for most of the day.
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Thank you to Beth, who sent this link my way. The podcast 99% Invisible did an episode on The Clinch Cover. I’m not particularly attached to The Clinch and I feel like the notion of “Trojan horsing” romance with illustrated covers is a little silly. We still shelve them in romance and I still handsell them as romance. I see it more as a marketing trend to keep romance selling while getting new readers. BUT THOSE ARE JUST MY THOUGHTS.
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This Gideon the Ninth fanart was shared in a SmartTwitches Twitch stream and we loved it.
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TONIGHT: June 8 at 7pm: Nekesa Afia with Denny S. Bryce (Historical mystery/fiction). Free event! I’ll be introducing both of these authors. Hope you can make it!
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This link is from Sophia. Thanks Sophia! It’s a fascinating Twitter thread on how deadly food really was in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Not only did presidents die from innocuous things like cherries and milk, we had an entire illicit industry in bathtub gin that blinded people. We have the FDA because bread was being made with plaster. That's before we get to patent medicines that were booze and arsenic… https://t.co/36aLljjqov
— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) May 21, 2021
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Let’s get weird with these singing blobs! I also discovered this is part of a Google music experiment called Blob Opera. It’s fun to play around with, though I lack the talent to create anything recognizable.
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Speaking of “Trojan Horse” covers, I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this one for Lexi Blake’s TAGGERT FAMILY VALUES:
https://www.amazon.com/Taggart-Family-Values-Lexi-Blake-ebook/dp/B0927SP445/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=lexi+blake+taggert+family+values&qid=1623263840&sr=8-3
The book is a collection of short stories and novellas about one of the main couples in Blake’s Masters & Mercenaries series—a series which features hard-core bdsm and high-tech espionage. Talk about false advertising. Anyone who is unaware of the basic M&M premise and who buys this book based on the cover, thinking it’s going to be cute stories about trying to keep the romance alive while raising kids, is going to need their smelling salts after reading the first couple of pages!
These links are so interesting and new to me. Mikki Kendall is fearless and fierce, definitely following her. Thanks for all the enjoyment.
In regard to the Mikki Kendall tweet, I once heard that “every regulation is written in blood”. And most of them are – every disaster (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire anyone?) that comes from a lack of care leads to increased regulation.
Early in the pandemic, someone asked why they should pay attention to the World Health Organization; the response was to point out that they pretty much eradicated smallpox.
@DDD: I loathe those cartoon covers, as I’ve mentioned before (more than once!) & now they’re starting to show up in other genres as well. Ugh.
@DiscoDollyDeb @hng23 I think the illustrated covers have their place, it’s just that they’re getting slapped on evvvverrryyything. Romcom? Fine! a book where two damaged people confront their personal demons to get to their HEA? Please, no.
I also think it’s hilarious because I’ve noticed authors of lighthearted/quirky paranormal rom coms, which have been using cutesy illustrated covers for years, actually moving away from that kind of cover. Compare https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IK98HO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p2_i0 with https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FTDJNZ3/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1, for example.
I still think the recent prevalence of cutesy illustrated covers is an insidious–perhaps not intentional, but still insidious–way of trying to show things like racial diversity, size diversity, and queer relationships without showing any ACTUAL people who fit those categories. A way for publishers to slap themselves on the back for publishing more “diverse” content than they used to, but only in sanitized, cute illustrations. It actually really bugs me, beyond the marketing confusion of ‘just what is this book supposed to be, actually?’
@Heather M: Technically, you’re right. However, buyers of romance are more likely to buy an illustrated cover of those things rather than a photograph. (It’s early for me, but I’ll see if I can link stats later.) But it’s also a feedback loop and I don’t think the onus is all on publishers. If the trend weren’t selling, they wouldn’t do it.
Example: People respond better with their money to illustrations of a queer couple on the cover versus a photograph, so the publisher will obviously keeping going that route in terms of design.
I’ve also said before that I think illustrated covers are a way of “managing” what women are “permitted” to respond to sexually. (Don’t roll your eyes—think how much of women’s bodies and lives get “managed” by the culture.) There’s always been a shaming process associated with women looking at, enjoying, or appreciating/responding in a sexual way to cover models. Thank goodness dark/mafia romance hadn’t latched on to illustrated covers yet!
@Amanda oh I’m sure it’s selling; if it wasn’t selling then they wouldn’t keep doing it. I just wonder if sometimes these books aren’t selling in spite of their covers instead of because of them. That’s just me, though. I know these things are trends that come and go, but just now the prevalence of a certain generic, every-book-looks-like-women’s-fic style bothers me (even as I have many of those books on my shelf).
Martha Wells won a Nebula award for Network Effect. T. Kingfisher won one too.
https://www.tor.com/2021/06/05/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2020-nebula-awards/
Hello All, I fully recommend the whole Perfect gentlemen series. If for nothing else the next to last book SMOKE AND SIN is a keeper so much so for me that I mistakenly bought this book TWICE! I sent the other copy back but still this book of the series is a keeper for me. But it has a satisfying end to the series too. So do enjoy this series.
Wednesday? No, no, it’s friday. (I may be running a little behind.) The thing that struck me about the clinch cover article was the way they made it sound like authors had control of those covers back in the day. Not likely.
The history of horrible food thread was fascinating and appalling.
I hope I’m not the only one who thought that last link was about singing boobs at first glance.