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Cover design is important. Although we’re told not to judge a book by its cover, the truth is, we do. Just last night, a friend sent me a link to a collection of hilariously bad book covers (my favourite is probably Kim. Or Little Women. It’s hard to decide…)

I’ve already done a series on book cover designs here on the blog – but that message – and the fact that I have a new book coming out on August 30, 2021 – prompted me to continue the story with an update on the importance of cover design.

Continue reading “Continuing the Story…” →

Novels are powerful.

‘Cheaper than airline tickets,’ is how Lydia, heroine of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt describes books.

‘But far more dangerous,’ replies Javier.

I think he’s right.

Continue reading “Politics, Identity and Novels” →

Like many not-so-young adults, I enjoy reading the occasional ‘Young Adult’ (YA) novel. Culture Trip‘s Parish Turner describes the category as one which not only reflects the world around us, but which offers a sense of hopeful escapism – something many of us crave this year!

Despite its reputation as a ‘less serious’ category of fiction, YA frequently deals with difficult issues, ranging from general coming-of-age stories, to social problem novels. And it is precisely because YA often blends relatable settings with engaging fantasy that it is so powerful. Meeting so many of its readers at a critical juncture in their lives, YA has the potential to introduce young people to formative ideas about identity, self-value, relationships, and justice, or to reinforce old stereotypes about feminine beauty and meekness, and masculine wealth and power being the only important values.

That’s why I was fascinated to speak to YA author Ally Aldridge. It’s not every day we get to speak directly to an author and find out what went on behind the book! But today, I’m thrilled to be part of the book tour for Ally’s brand-new Ocean Heart. I hope you’ll enjoy this deep-dive as much as I did!

Continue reading “Author Q&A with Ally Aldridge” →

The #challengeaccepted hashtag got me thinking about the power – and danger – of anonymity, and the prevalence of pen names. The idea, Belinda Jepsen at Mamamia reports, is for women “to upload a grey-scale selfie in an apparent show of solidarity”.

The challenge originated with Turkish women drawing attention to domestic violence and femicide. The black and white photographs, far from a mere aesthetic choice, are designed to mimic the sort that appear in reports about murdered women.

Yet, while the idea might be for ordinary and especially marginalised women to have their faces seen and their voices heard, the most successful (if we’re judging the accumulation of ‘likes’ as success) are those glamorous, often sexualised selfies posted by celebrities with vapid Hollywood sentiments.

Continue reading “Pen Names & Anonymous Authors” →

One of the joys connected to reading and writing is reading books about the craft of writing.

Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird in many ways represent two opposite ends of the spectrum of writing guides.

I first came across these two books in two very different ways. And it is perhaps fair to say that the ways in which I encountered them shaped my experiences reading them.

Continue reading “Wired Birds” →

Location

Location, location, location. It’s that old real estate saying. And, in our globalised economy – and particularly, in our globalised digital economy – we could be forgiven for thinking it shouldn’t matter where an author or reader is located.

But it does.

In this final post on #bookbigotry, we’ll look at how location affects writers in terms of their language choices, and how it affects readers in terms of what books they have access to. Then, we’ll examine how all three factors explored in this series – format, platform, and location – affect the way books are understood and appreciated.

Continue reading “On Book Bigotry – Part 3” →

Platform

In my previous post, I set out three subtle forms of ‘book bigotry’ I have observed in publishing, whereby reviewers, readers, and even writers judge a book by some aspect of its publication, rather than on the basis of its written content. That post explored the first of these kinds of prejudice, based on a book’s format (e.g. physical vs. ebook). In this post, we turn to examine prejudice based on platform, and in the next, we will look at location-based biases.

Continue reading “On Book Bigotry – Part 2” →

Format

I first came across the concept of #bookbigotry in the writings of author and publishing guru Carolyn Howard-Johnson. She describes how people sometimes make snap judgements about a book on the basis that it is independently published – without reading the book’s description, or the author’s bio, or even looking at the cover.

Indie authors can encounter book bigotry early on in the publishing process, as soon as they start shopping their novels around for reviews. Many reviewers explicitly state that they will not consider independently published works.

Given the vast number of requests they are inundated with, it’s understandable reviewers want to narrow down the herd. A ‘no indies’ requirement appears to be a simple and effective hurdle for reviewers to put in place in order to stem the flow of requests. A way of using traditional publishers as gatekeepers.

But of course, not all traditionally published books are high quality and well-produced, and not all independently published books are error-riddled dross. I’ve written before about how traditional publishers are no longer the gatekeepers they once (supposedly) were.

Continue reading “On Book Bigotry – Part 1” →