Yeah, if they're too chickenshit to actually put ZOMG SCARY MELANIN on the cover, I'd at least rather see a bland wall of text than a whitewashed total lie... *sighs*
Latest infuriating run-in with this sort of nonsense, from the bookseller side of things: I dropped by one of the downtown Borders stores on my way to the show tonight, and while I was guzzling my tea I remembered that the latest of Tananarive Due's "African Immortals" vampire books was finally supposed to be out in trade paperback...I've been waiting impatiently for this one because I adore this series and have been wanting to see what happens next, but am too OCD to get the hardcover and have the series be mismatched on my shelves. So I pull up their inventory search...yep, the trade edition's been out for a couple of weeks, nope, this store didn't have it. OK, time to check all the other local stores...no luck. Not one single store in the region has it. Because I guess some bean-counter somewhere in corporate thought that a book by a multiply award-winning black author, latest in a praised and successful series full of great POC characters, just wasn't marketable enough to deserve shelf space...gosh, we all know there's no POC in DC, after all, and nobody reads vampire books these days, right? *headdesks*
DEAR BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS: it's a crazy thought, I know, but did you ever consider that books with POC characters on the covers might sell better IF YOU ACTUALLY PUT THEM OUT ON SHELVES WHERE PEOPLE CAN SEE THEM?
(And yes, surprise surprise, I first started reading this series because I stumbled across The Living Blood in a used bookstore and this cover just grabbed me and said "this is not going to be another paint-by-numbers cliched whitebread vamp book". Funny how that works...)
Barnes & Noble, to their credit, seem to be doing a little better here: they apparantly have the book in stock in a little more than half of their local stores, so I'll probably be running down to Metro Center to get it tomorrow night after the show.
no subject
Latest infuriating run-in with this sort of nonsense, from the bookseller side of things: I dropped by one of the downtown Borders stores on my way to the show tonight, and while I was guzzling my tea I remembered that the latest of Tananarive Due's "African Immortals" vampire books was finally supposed to be out in trade paperback...I've been waiting impatiently for this one because I adore this series and have been wanting to see what happens next, but am too OCD to get the hardcover and have the series be mismatched on my shelves. So I pull up their inventory search...yep, the trade edition's been out for a couple of weeks, nope, this store didn't have it. OK, time to check all the other local stores...no luck. Not one single store in the region has it. Because I guess some bean-counter somewhere in corporate thought that a book by a multiply award-winning black author, latest in a praised and successful series full of great POC characters, just wasn't marketable enough to deserve shelf space...gosh, we all know there's no POC in DC, after all, and nobody reads vampire books these days, right? *headdesks*
DEAR BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS: it's a crazy thought, I know, but did you ever consider that books with POC characters on the covers might sell better IF YOU ACTUALLY PUT THEM OUT ON SHELVES WHERE PEOPLE CAN SEE THEM?
(And yes, surprise surprise, I first started reading this series because I stumbled across The Living Blood in a used bookstore and this cover just grabbed me and said "this is not going to be another paint-by-numbers cliched whitebread vamp book". Funny how that works...)
Barnes & Noble, to their credit, seem to be doing a little better here: they apparantly have the book in stock in a little more than half of their local stores, so I'll probably be running down to Metro Center to get it tomorrow night after the show.