A publishing controversy, in Black and White

By now, most of us have heard about the publishing controversy that erupted when Bloomsbury decided to pull the ol’ switcheroo with the cover of a young adult novel. For those unfamiliar with the situ, Justine Larbalestier is the author of a book entitled Liar:

A piece of young adult fiction, Larbalestier describes the protagonist of her novel as a “Black girl with short, nappy hair”. However, the initial cover used by Bloomsbury Children’s Books, the book’s publisher, featured a young white girl with long, straight tresses.

via Why do we need white faces to sell black books? | Opinion | theGrio.

Well, as you might imagine, the faux cover didn’t go over too well—scratch that, Bloomsbury was pilloried for their decision and eventually capitulated to the public’s (and the author’s) demands:

In a statement, Bloomsbury said that it was changing the cover design, adding, “We regret that our original creative direction for Liar — which was intended to symbolically reflect the narrator’s complex psychological makeup — has been interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character’s ethnicity,” according to Publishers Weekly.

via Bloomsbury Will Change Book Jacket to Reflect Race of Novel’s Narrator – ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com.

Now for the speculation. What in the world was Bloomsbury thinking? Perhaps they figured that covers with Blacks don’t sell, a view held my many publishers. The problem with this perspective is that it equates Black with a lack of sales, while every book that Oprah Winfrey holds up, and those with the President or First Lady on the cover manage to sell just fine. Not to mention the millions of books that sell annually that include Black protagonists (James Patterson, anyone?).

But here’s an alternate view: perhaps Bloomsbury was worried about a potential backlash in the Black community if they published a book entitled Liar with a Black woman on the cover. Fair enough. So why not just publish the book with the word Liar on the cover?  Why pretend the Black character, the main character, is White?

Whatever their internal reasons for the cover art, Bloomsbury’s explanation is a bogus one. But this incident and the recent Microsoft switcheroo, along with the resulting backlash show that multicultural marketing practices are in need of some heavy-duty reevaluation.

Of course, Bloomsbury could have avoided the issue altogether by following the advice of an NYT blog comment, submitted by one who identified himself as Peter David: “I think they should sidestep it entirely by revising the cover so that it depicts someone with their pants on fire.”

Now there’s an idea.