Why the Kindle is a Godsend

Despite being an avid reader, I rarely set foot in a bookstore. Yesterday was the first time I went to a brick and mortar bookstore in at least six months. After I browsed for a few minutes, I was reminded why I made the transition to e-books.

Based on the cover, what would you assume Bridget Jones’s Diary is about? A beautiful young lady training to be a nun in a 1930’s boarding school? A fourteen-year-old trying to overcome her oppressive Puritan background so she can pursue her love of Ed Hardy- style graphic design?

For anyone who’s read the book, or even just seen the movie trailer, this cover seems radically inappropriate. In case you lived under a rock the past ten years, this is Wikipedia’s summary of the book: “written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes (often humorously) about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships.” This cover in no way conveys that the main character is “thirty something”, hangs out with a gay, aging popstar and a woman that says fuck a lot. It also does not convey that her vices include heavy drinking. 



Yet this is better than most of the covers I’ve been subjected to as an urban fantasy fan. At least the new Bridget Jones’s Diary cover is creative. That is more than I can say for the average urban fantasy cover, which seem to come in three versions, max. I first noticed the unoriginality when I saw this cover.

 

Then I walked two centimeters along the same shelf and spotted this cover.

Both covers feature presumably the main character with her back turned to the viewer. But it could still be a coincidence, if it weren’t for ten other series’ covers featuring almost the exact same pose.

Of course, sometimes the publisher feels that showing this much of the main character reveals too much. So they just opt for showing the main character’s legs standing near something mystical.

Or maybe if the cover artist has been watching a lot of Matthew McConaughey movies lately, they decide the readers want to see the main character’s well-toned abdomen.

These covers tell me NOTHING about the protagonist. Occasionally, I can figure out if the book is about a werewolf or a witch. But most of the time, all the cover tells me is that the main character probably spends a lot of time at the gym. For books that feature a lot of combat and running, they also seem to wear a lot of inconveniently tight jeans and stiletto heels.

The worst part about these covers is that they are often VERY sexual. I can sort of understand some racy imagery on a paranormal romance cover. However, I cannot comprehend why a cover would be so explicit if the book featured NO SEX and an auxiliary romantic conflict. For example, take a gander at this urban fantasy cover.

This looks like softcore porn about that woman Jesse James cheated on his wife with. The main character, besides being celebate through most of the series, has only one tatoo.

So now I buy ebooks so I can read my urban fantasy books in public. Even if I stick to the adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, I still can’t buy any more books with needlessly sexual, ambiguously nude people on their covers. Because even if I don’t judge a book by its cover, someone will judge ME if they see me reading THIS.