New York Times

By Virginia Kettles

In 2013, the New York Times bestselling author Deborah Copaken wrote an essay about her experiences watching her books be “girlified” for publishing.

In the essay, Copaken spoke about the publication of her first book, a memoir about her experiences as a war photographer. After purchasing the rights, Random House changed the title of her manuscript to Shutterbabe and designed a cover involving a naked cartoon torso against a pink background with a camera covering the genitalia. It took a long fight on Copaken’s side to convince the publishers to rethink the design.

Such is the case for gender-specific advertising, and, as the saying goes, it doesn’t hurt that “sex sells.”

While there is little data readily available on the exact trends of this phenomenon, gender-specific advertising in regards to book covers has become increasingly common.

Walking into any local bookstore, customers can often find two kinds of books: ones with dark colors, thick, heavy fonts, and simple images, and others with lighter, muted colors, cursive fonts, and images of attractive, usually Caucasian, women. Some, as if by instinct, will unconsciously make assumptions on what kind of person wrote the book and, as a result, who the book is catered towards.

What’s wrong with this? Perhaps nothing. After all, a marketing tactic like that must be successful if it is practiced so freely. Consumers are perfectly able to purchase what they like. If that means we humans are slaves to our unconscious preferences that parallel the stereotypes associated with our gender, then so be it.

But this comes at a cost.

Johnson, a successful young adult author, wrote an essay about the uncomfortable attribution of gender and quality when it came to discussing books. According to her, books written by women, and especially books written by women ABOUT women, are often pegged as being of a lower quality.

“When I hear people talk about ‘trashy’ books, 95% of the time, they are talking about books written by women. When I see or hear the terms ‘light,’ ‘fluffy,’ ‘breezy,’ or ‘beach read’…95% of the time, they are talking about books written by women.”

Thus, I wondered. If femininity is not taken seriously in the literary world, what does that say about the book covers that employ the feminine theme so heavily? If a person is presented with a feminine-looking cover, will they see the book as being of a lower quality? Would they be interested in reading the book? Would they think the book could win an award?

As a senior in high school, I tested just that.

I created 3 pairs of fake book covers, where one was garnered towards women, and the other towards men, based on the author’s gender, the font, and the image in the background. I attached the different covers to surveys, in which I asked questions about what the book’s quality seemed to be, and whether the book was likely to win a literary award. I then distributed the survey to about 200 students and a handful of teachers at my high school.

The results were fascinating. While the gender of the author for the book Outsider made little difference when it came to the perceived quality of the book, the fonts and images in the other books elicited substantially different reactions. Participants saw the desk-and-skull background for The Study Side as being of a higher quality, and the bold-faced fonts of The Broke Test even more so. In comparison, the image of the woman-smelling-flowers background, or the frilly fonts, did not impress the participants.

It seems there is still a lot to be said about how people view femininity in terms of respect and reputability in the literary world.

I recently stumbled across an interesting article in the New York Times. I’ve lately been interested in the ongoing print vs. electronic debate in the book world, and this article offered an interesting answer to the question:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/publishers-gild-books-with-special-effects-to-compete-with-e-books.html?ref=books

One line in particular stuck out. “If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.” There are pictures in the article of books with beautiful, embossed covers, gilded pages, tasseled bookmarks. It’s true that many of these features might make a book a beautiful addition to your shelf or coffee table. However, for now at least, it doesn’t seem that many people take their decorator to the bookstore and pick up the latest Stephen King because their den needs some more color. It seems to me that the pleasures of owning are intertwined with the pleasures of reading.

Working on a paper the other night, I found myself on the floor of the library, going through volume after volume of the beautiful 1903 Library Edition of the Works of Ruskin, and I have to say that the deckled edges and thick, high quality paper made the experience infinitely more enjoyable. I know the same thing goes for my books at home. My “pleasures of owning” don’t come from the books’ physical beauty, but more from the way their appearance correlates with my memory of reading them. I have a beautiful edition of Pride & Prejudice and I admit I liked it better than my dog-eared paper back. I like it better not just because it looks nicer on the shelf, but because the sky blue cloth cover covered in burnt red curling script makes me feel a little more Jane Austenian, a little more Lizzie Bennet curled up in a tree, when I read it.

You’ll note that the picture at the very top of the page shows Jay-Z signing his intricate memoir. Not having read Decoded I can’t comment on it or how it compares to the rest of the celebrity memoir wave, but it is interesting to see how gorgeous editions are no longer reserved for the classics. I only hope that publishers are realizing that while we can judge books, and maybe buy them, by their covers, content will never cease to be important.

Judging a Book by its (Gendered) Cover

So we are supposed to judge the covers…