Update Jan 21st: Bloomsbury is changing the cover!

It’s 2010, the new millennium. 2010. Swapping out a protagonist’s skin color in a book cover shouldn’t even cross our minds. You’d think, as a nation, we’d have grown up by now. At this point, there’s just no excuse. But then, there never was.

What am I talking about? The Bloomsbury YA book covers for LIAR by Justine Larbalestier and MAGIC UNDER GLASS by Jaclyn Dolamore. For in-depth coverage of MAGIC, read the timeline at Chasing Ray, Ari’s open letter to Bloomsbury, and Jaclyn’s response.

There’s also a petition in motion. Feel free to sign.

The covers of doom

And the million dollar question is…

Why?
How is this ok?
How does it continue to go on?

Several bloggers (see links above) have already addressed the fundamental devaluation of people in this issue. So I’ll just say, they’re right.

It’s also fundamental devaluation of the stories and the authors themselves. Think about it, a publisher must have little value for an author and his or her work if they completely rewrite the protagonist’s image. Sorry, your character isn’t really someone we think deserves to be on the cover of your book.

If the publisher can’t stand behind the story enough to show the protagonist on the cover, then why exactly did they publish the story in the first place? What’s the point?

If a story is worth printing, isn’t it worth printing the actual story? If a character is worth reading an entire book about, isn’t he/she worthy of representing his or her own journey?

Don’t we hold these truths to be self-evident?

Seriously? We’ve had 234 years to figure this out.
The answer is yes.