After reading the latest post on Romancing the Blog about books with embarrassing titles, I started thinking about a conversation I had yesterday with my head of circulation. We were discussing the latest issue of RT and got on the topic of covers. The past couple of issues of RT have featured several letters to the editor about the December 2004 issue and its "scandalous" cover. Joan and I were joking about book covers we had seen that were much worse, and before I knew it we actually started to go through the magazine to find covers that were much more scandalous. Juvenile, I know, but amusing. As we paged through the ads we stumbled across this cover, and I started to rant about publishers and covers.
As a librarian, I am responsible both to my profession and my community to uphold the Library Bill of Rights. I believe strongly in free access to information/materials and abhor the idea of censorship. However, when I see a book cover like the one above I know that there is no way in hell I could have it in my library. My board and patrons wouldn't stand for it. While I was amused by Jennie's recent challenge, I do realize that there are certain objections patrons can make that have validity we can't fight. Just as Jennie would not put the first season of Queer As Folk on her shelves, there are certain books I know I could never put on my shelves. Not because of content, but because of cosmetics. It is incredibly frustrating to me that a cover that does not impact the story at all manages to keep a book off library shelves and off our readers' radar.
Some might say that for me to make that statement is not fair as the book cover above is for an e-book, and many of the e-book covers are a bit raunchy. That might be true, however, some e-book publishers (like the publisher of the above cover) are now moving into the print arena as well. A book with a cover like this, this, or even this (all available in paperback) would never make it to my library's shelves. Again, not because of content, but because of cosmetics. How fair is that to our patrons? It's not fair at all. Could it be avoided? Absolutely.
Please do not think I am picking on the content of the books. I'm not. I have a very good friend and a couple of patrons who have purchased a couple of the books I just mentioned and loved them. There are several I've heard rave reviews about and would love to be able to purchase for my library. But I can't. Not as long as they have the covers they do.
And please do not think I'm deliberately picking on one publisher (Ellora's Cave). Most publishers are guilty of producing a cover that libraries would find objectionable at one time or another. The only reason I am mentioning some of EC's books is because a couple of their titles were the first one's I thought of when this topic came up. I do want to point out that they do publish covers that I would have no problem having on my library's shelves, whether it be this one, this one, or even this one.
Which leads me to my point (I knew I had one somewhere in here). Why do publishers release books with covers that our patrons (some, not all) would object to? Joan says she thinks it is because libraries are not their target audience. But that can't be true, can it? Why would you deliberately cut yourself off from one particular market? A market that not only increases your readership, but introduces your company and authors to new readers. Doesn't that seem foolish if that is the case? I'm sure there are patrons out there who would love it if their library owned some of these books.
I realize that my opinion is probably not a popular opinion, and that I will probably receive some hate mail about my views. So be it. But if anyone can explain to me why publishers do some of the crazy things they do, I would truly appreciate it.
posted by Kelly @ 10:35 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------
