Hi. So. There's been a decent-size discussion of late about book covers and gender: Maureen Johnson’s cover flip was a very persuasive exercise
in demonstrating how books by female authors are marketed differently from
how they would be if penned by a man. James Dawson’s subsequent blogpost on how his own covers have been jacketed nudged our attention towards
the fact that the jacketing of book covers has less to do with the gender of
the author, and more to do with that of the target audience.
Surely the publishers who jacket the books (as well as the people who write the insides) believe that boys and girls want the same thing from a book? A
good story; well-drawn characters the reader can identify with; accessible language. Well, yes, I think publishers do believe that – these are the cornerstones of commissioning, but even before an editor makes an offer on a book, he or she must think of how to sell this to the
reps, who must think of how to sell it to the booksellers, who must think about
selling it to their customers…
And there’s the rub.
Despite the fact that the books are written for a young
readers, they need to be sold to adults. Admittedly, teens have significant
buying power, but they are still of an age where the adults around them are
trying to nurture a love of reading by buying books for them. Obviously the
younger you go, the greater the influence of adults over the contents of a
child’s bookcase.
No one in my office, or who I follow on Twitter, or who I
meet at book launches would dream of defining a potential reader by their
gender (or race, or sexuality), but this is only a small subset of the
purchasing population: what about the sales assistant who told my daughter,
“But those are boys shoes”? Or the friend who apologised for only having boys
toys for her to play with? Or every stranger in a queue who tells me I have a
very pretty son because the 'son' in question is wearing combats…?
Publishers aren’t just selling to those of us engaged in this
debate. They’re selling to those who aren’t. By asking them to move more
strongly towards gender-neutral jacketing (which, FYI, mostly seems to suggest eliminating pink – a subject to be discussed in another blog post) we’re asking the industry to forego
income in favour of ideals.
I like to think books can change the world, but people still
have to read them. If adults who want pink books for their little princesses
can’t buy them, does that mean they buy something else pink instead. Something
that isn’t a book?
