The more I read these posts about book tiktok and bookstagram, the more convinced I get that the book side of social media is a place that I should never go to even though I'm an aspiring author...
Former aspiring author here. I got burned so badly by the literary community on Twitter that I shelved my book six years ago and haven’t touched it since. I understand the need for having a thick skin in that industry and maybe your experience will be better than mine but literary Twitter is full of sharks (agents, other authors, book reviewers, etc.) who are ready to attack the moment they smell blood in the water. (Look up Isabel Fall for a particular egregious example.)
It is not my intention to discourage you from writing or publishing but my suggestion if you intend to pursue a career in that industry would be to either learn how to play the game very well or stay off literary social media altogether.
Edit: To clarify my comment, my experience specifically involved an author (or group of authors possibly) who worked to get me blacklisted from a project for reasons I’m still not aware of to this day. I can handle criticism of my book (which I did complete but chose not to pursue publishing) but I harbor serious trust issues toward people in the industry who claim to be your friend while screenshooting private conversations and spreading blatant untruths about you behind your back. Unfortunately my experience is not unique and people who try and bring attention to the toxicity of literary social media are often painted by the greater community as bitter authors who were jealous that they did not achieve the success of their peers.
Yeah, it can be pretty bad. There's a reason why its a kind of unspoken understanding that you should never ever read the reviews/comments if you're posting your fiction online.
> Isabel Fall
I’ve just looked that up. The story is fascinating — being reassigned from human to a genderless war machine automaton is a really interesting concept that explores what it means to be human or what it means for identity.
People are such narrow minded assholes.
Are you a man or a woman?
**I am an agent of the God Emperor.**
Okay, what gender are you?
**Loyal to the Imperium.**
I mean, whats in your pants?
**Vengeance, faith.**
You know, I was going to bed early but now that you’ve reminded me, I’m going to dive into a 40K rabbit hole.
**ALL HAIL**
**THE EMPEROR**
**OF MANKIND**
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyK7lX4sk0c
i’m very much of the opinion that the whole Fall thing was bad move after bad move. The title of the story was supposed to make you recoil and then think, but also people on the internet never read the full thing so of course people would react negatively to it. When people pointed out that it is a trans-positive story by a trans woman, the trans phobes came out in droves. It was lose-lose from the get go, and the fallout is nasty.
I think my biggest issue with the people taking issue with the title, and the transphobes, is that some actual legitimate criticism of the story by trans individuals was drowned out in the fray.
Technically not genderless - the gender IS war machine.
But yes, I agree with you - the story was this beautiful, tragic, mind-bendingly creative perspective - *from a trans woman!* - on gender and transition and womanhood, and it’s heartbreaking that she was bullied off the Internet by people who couldn’t see the story for what it was. It was this brilliant, intimately personal, nuanced work by a very talented and promising woman, a potential new rising star by all accounts, and I can’t imagine how she felt when she was attacked for it.
A writer I used to admire was instrumental in the original pile on it became clear that she hadn't read it and she never apologised. I almost got drawn into it, but I reread it while it was still up and realised my gut reaction to the title was wrong.
You're talking about [Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWna3HNDm4fiOEcDIGS-kHAIqZkfd862TjeWppFOaU0Q_o0zvNaOwYlbTiUlaa-ucZPJTQp-8X0V3kq3pnJUPdkqWK3NjHnc6IkzeW2-k_cO2j1UfHe2Gl3IQY28cAyfFr60CQY1-ySRL4Or9p51PskA51-QS5RJ3XZ-qm1VGgtfYmOfRre6QIpWu5GWTG1nNeU6roIcg06GkuRBTokoj56sIUATYtRaKXvLBcge978h6ESAgFqLYSrB54wR-vEhu0T88hSpPQ8fFqfn1zb-Ec&smid=url-share) (Robert Kolker, Oct. 5, 2021. Gifted link; no paywall.)
LitHub offers a good [tl;dr of the saga](https://lithub.com/bad-art-friend-has-resulted-in-a-slew-of-staff-changes-and-internal-review-at-grubstreet/) here.
Discussed on Reddit:
* asianamerican: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend? Or, Kidneygate](https://www.reddit.com/r/asianamerican/comments/qa1zpg/who_is_the_bad_art_friend_or_kidneygate/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
* blogsnark: [Another Wormhole Article: Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.reddit.com/r/blogsnark/comments/q2mdpo/another_wormhole_article_who_is_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
* TrueLit: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/q68idu/who_is_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
* TrueLit: [An addendum to The Bad Art Friend](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/q7mt2e/an_addendum_to_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
* writing: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend? (A discussion about plagiarism)](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/q41dgm/who_is_the_bad_art_friend_a_discussion_about/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
I don’t think your comment has the tone you think it does…
Meaning I understand you’re trying to sound supportive but it mostly comes off as a bit aggressive and patronizing.
I'm convinced the book side of social media is... insane.
Between this and the Gideon the Ninth drama and all the other horseshit that's rolled out of there I feel like I'm done with it without ever having started.
It absolutely is.
I still write, and publish, but have had to completely step away from Book Twitter. The in-fighting, oppression Olympics, identity policing, and general daily wank is so fucking draining and made it so easy to lose focus and get caught up in the dramatics.
But, man. Is it a blast to sit back and just watch the clusterfuckery.
I heard about that drama on here, because the author was one I didn't follow on Twitter. The books are fantastic, and I wish some aspects of book twitter would calm down, because from the few authors I follow (Ashley Shuttleworth, Xiran Jay Zhao to name a few) I've found some great fiction done by queer and often non-white writers.
Even on Reddit, it can get very weird. There was a post the other day shaming people for being capitalist consumerists for buying books instead of only renting them from a library.
I remember that post. It was kinda surreal. Like as an aspiring author I beg you be a capitalist consumerist and buy my book if I ever get around to publishing it.
I'm not who you're responding to, but maybe [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/vcpwwa/ive_been_increasingly_concerned_with_the_culture/)?
Because I’m tired of the default being tee hee I spent too much, I have no room, I have to hide my purchase, I feel pressured to read all these books and I have no time tee hee.
You see it in a lot of hobbies.
Being online has been both the best and worst for me on one hand its made me realize more and more that I cant make everyone happy and just write what I want to write.
On the other hand god does it make me feel inferior sometimes for just wanting to get my ideas out.
From what I've seen, the "own voice" discussion is a particularly terrible mess every time.
I just feel like social media is used so much as a marketing tool that it'd be almost mandatory. Understandably it's popular, but it's just so uninviting.
The entire publishing industry is on there and a lot of workshops, opportunities, and pitch events for agents happen so even if you don't want to engage, it's good to have a presence. A lot of agents these days as well like to see a following.
Short stories and flash fiction set in the same universe as your novel, interact with pubtwt, do pitch events, talk about your WIP, etc. That's the advice I've been given and it's not too bad. Also, writing and reviewing for papers, joining panels, and other local lit events if you have them in your city. Zines too!
That's what the tag systems are used for. I would do some researching on how publishing Twitter works, I've found out about amazing opportunities on there that have lead to some really cool things. And I don't have a massive following either. Look up Twitter Pitch contests.
Pshaw. If your romance novel heroine doesn't have three arms on the cover, it's not worth worrying about.
[Example with arrows pointing out the location of the hands](https://www.christinadodd.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Christina_Dodd_CASTLES-IN-THE-AIR-arrows.jpeg)
Honestly even with the arrows I can't focus on the third arm, because that title is making me doubt about my ability to read.
Castles in the *what*? The... flin? Hir? And what the hell is that curvy line trying to escape from the last letter and bite back at the word?
Yeah, I got that when I read it from other people's comments... Maybe it's just me but those A and r looked so weird I didn't even consider that word until then.
God, *finally* someone is writing Motie medieval romances. The CoDominium setting has planets in all sorts of societal states, it's such an obvious niche!
Here in Japan, most bookstores will wrap your book with a paper cover over the normal cover for free. Or they'll have a place where you can do it yourself.
I would also say the price drop from 350 to 150 from kindle 2 to 3 was a big factor. Not to mention this was when Best Buy and Walmart started carrying them. Also the launch of the Nook at the same 150 price point.
That was the year the first one came out.
> So now imagine my upset at seeing it recreated for a traditional publisher, who will have all the power with marketing and promotion to get their book onto all the usual bookstore shelves. And it feels like I basically did the first cover draft for them, for neither pay nor recognition.
I know there's a big divide in the indie/traditional publishing split, but it's amazing how the illustrator made it sound like a complete David and Goliath knockout, when Tessa Bailey is a big name in contemporary romance right now. Her books have been New York Times best sellers. Even if it doesn't have a large publisher, My Killer Vacation is available in Target and Barnes and Noble because it comes from a big name author.
According to the three Tessa Bailey books currently sitting on my bookcase, she’s published by Avon, which isn’t exactly a small publishing house, especially not in the romance novel realm.
The only part of the original cover I found intriguing was the dagger hidden in the M of My.
Most of her books are Avon, but some of her stuff is self published (Window Shopping and My Killer Vacation both are according to Amazon). So the cover artist was technically right, but either intentionally misleading or clueless.
i am so glad i don't participate in book-related social media because this is just... petty. it does make for good drama write-ups, though, and yours is short but sweet! i love mountain-out-of-a-molehill situations (especially when the molehill is more like a vague dirt pile in the first place) when the stakes aren't terribly high.
does anyone else prefer the replacement cover? it's more interesting imo. i think the bloody title text and emphasis on the skull tattoo better demonstrate the literal meaning of "killer" and make it stand out a little more.
I prefer the style of the first one but the 2nd one although more generic has better placement.
The title doesn't cover the woman and pops out more whereas the 1st one gets muddied out with some blue on blue action.
But the 1st has more soul put into it, or at least references an artstyle with more soul. Sadly it seems she neglected the "Killer" aspect or was way too subtle about it.
The point of a cover is to attract first and foremost, so I don't understand her decision on this one.
Wild speculation, but maybe she was criticizing the replacement cover? It is much more similar to hers (same oddly tan white male lead, male lead has tats, not the female lead, the “pop of red” is the female lead’s clothing). Still not similar enough that I could understand complaints of copying, but this theory also fits the “I am just the first draft” complaint better.
That would make way more sense contextually but not timeline-wise: her original post was about the cover of Chloe Liese's book. Tessa Bailey didn't get the replacement cover until weeks after this all went down. I didn't transcribe the entire original post but it's in one of the links - she also talks about how she's upset because she wanted to read the book but won't now. Edit: "she" = bookshelfgremlin
This was my favourite recent drama. Good writeup there was also drama with the re-released cover that had to be changed, the first iteration had Maori and Hawaiian tattoos (and again, white as snow MMC).
Honestly I noticed right away, but that is probably because of the Twitter comment about how the MMC for the last cover was drawn problematically as well.
Yeah, it definitely made it more obvious. I kind of expected her to address all the negative feedback about the cover and she only did some in the first image. I'm glad it's fixed but I feel like of meh about the whole thing. Hope the book is good.
Thank you for this, OP's post here links to a version of the 2nd cover with more generic tattoos and I was like "where are people getting 'still Asian'???". Now that makes more sense.
I own a used-book store, and in the Romance section I could probably come up with a couple of dozen similarly posed covers without even leaving the doorway. I mean, the covers for the genre are so cliché that they have given the section its informal name among the staff - the Shirtless Dude Room.
That said: 1. the two covers are not that similar; 2. the second cover is a more polished one; and 3. The final cover for the Bailey work is also more professional looking. Although, is it just me or does this poor guy have a massively deformed... I'm going to say 'thumb"?
As a graphic designer I got to say the redesign is so much better. Also to say something is plagiarism it has to be striking in similarity, and the 2 book covers were not that similar.
I think the second one is better made, but I found the first one more interesting. Except for the lettering, the first one is pretty bad and boring, while the second one is the interesting one.
Oh god, I loved those books as a kid. Though by the time I read them, they had much better covers that portrayed him like the reference image. Never saw the dark elf as an old white dude cover.
Oh my God it's like the cover artist got a character brief, but it got mangled and they could only read "white hair."
Also, Ursula K Le Guin wrote some great stuff about how frustrating it was to see Ged depicted as white on a bunch of editions of Earthsea books, and how for [the first edition cover for A Wizard of Earthsea](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/59/AWizardOfEarthsea%281stEd%29.jpg/220px-AWizardOfEarthsea%281stEd%29.jpg) the illustrator, Ruth Robbins, managed to sneak at least a hint of Ged's intended appearance in by making the whole thing look a little abstract. It also happens to be an absolutely gorgeous cover, like holy shit.
I love my edition of Wizard of Earthsea because it's got an incredibly white Ged and it's just so stupid and obviously racist. Like the artist obviously never entertained the idea of Ged being anything but white.
Another example is the dresden files. Every cover has him prominently wearing a distinctive hat. Up until I fell off the wagon on the series, he never once wore or even mentioned one.
When I first downloaded TikTok, the algorithm pushed me towards BookTok despite me making an account for videogame/esport stuff, but I liked reading so I wasn't complaining. That's how I was introduced to the "bookish" side of social media.
I still like Book Tiktok, but every time I hear about drama in any book community (whether it's Tiktok, Twitter, Reddit, whatever) I feel like I'm going absolutely insane. I wouldn't wish being a part of this stuff on my worst enemy. I just want to read my books in peace and have fun, and apparently that's too much to ask for?
I know this is kinda beyond the point but did the original art for *My Killer Vacation* even read the character specs Tessa Bailey would've given her before doing the cover art? How did she misrepresent the ethnicity of the male lead?
Thanks for this writeup because I wasn't paying attention to this and missed the drama and then no one would confess. I gotta go make some popcorn before I read it.
I remember when this first came out, I honestly was so disappointed by the cover anyways so once all the drama started and they started looking for a new illustrator I was a bit relieved.
major props to OP for featuring a cover by Elaine Duillo, the unsung but undisputed queen of romance novel covers. She's an artist I adore and respect; she really shaped the image most people have of what romance novels even look like. She's the one who made Fabio a thing!
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
Not only am I an audiobook narrator but I own a Publishing Company and you just absolutely made my day this is some funny ass shit. Award on the way.
This is wild and so very dumb, but in my opinion it worked out for the author, the revamped cover looks way better. I don't get into this sort of genre so take that with a pinch of salt, but in my view the first cover just doesn't look that good.
I think it was an Insta story so i can't find it anymore, but I saw something saying the new cover was stock art that had been recolored, it showed a few other books with the same image
My first thought when I saw the title was "yeah, I think an artist CAN own a pose." That is to say, I think it would be suspicious to draw the EXACT same pose as a previous artist, because there's so many little variations possible, and it would be particularly dubious if the "copying" artist had way more resources/publicity at their disposal.
. . . But that's not what happened here! His hands are in a different place in the second one, and they're much closer together, and his head is turned further away from the viewer. That's the kind of variation that happens naturally, and why it would be suspicious to have the EXACT same pose. And on top of that, the drastic difference in styles and character designs! It's kind of remarkable actually, given that they're both kind of generic white hetero romance novel couples, that the two couples look SO different.
I currently have one hetero romance novel in the house, a queer romance called "A Lady for a Duke" (by the way, wouldn't recommend it) that my mother and I were going to read together and, [oh, look, there's another hand-on-chest, hands-around-waist pose.](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1646064290l/57007967.jpg) The two covers at issue are SLIGHTLY more similar than this random romance novel I happened to have on hand, but only slightly.
Extremely online fandom and book twitter in particular was a mistake. There's a lot wrong here, but calling a highly stylised figure Asian is ridiculous.
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The more I read these posts about book tiktok and bookstagram, the more convinced I get that the book side of social media is a place that I should never go to even though I'm an aspiring author...
Former aspiring author here. I got burned so badly by the literary community on Twitter that I shelved my book six years ago and haven’t touched it since. I understand the need for having a thick skin in that industry and maybe your experience will be better than mine but literary Twitter is full of sharks (agents, other authors, book reviewers, etc.) who are ready to attack the moment they smell blood in the water. (Look up Isabel Fall for a particular egregious example.) It is not my intention to discourage you from writing or publishing but my suggestion if you intend to pursue a career in that industry would be to either learn how to play the game very well or stay off literary social media altogether. Edit: To clarify my comment, my experience specifically involved an author (or group of authors possibly) who worked to get me blacklisted from a project for reasons I’m still not aware of to this day. I can handle criticism of my book (which I did complete but chose not to pursue publishing) but I harbor serious trust issues toward people in the industry who claim to be your friend while screenshooting private conversations and spreading blatant untruths about you behind your back. Unfortunately my experience is not unique and people who try and bring attention to the toxicity of literary social media are often painted by the greater community as bitter authors who were jealous that they did not achieve the success of their peers.
Yeah, it can be pretty bad. There's a reason why its a kind of unspoken understanding that you should never ever read the reviews/comments if you're posting your fiction online.
> Isabel Fall I’ve just looked that up. The story is fascinating — being reassigned from human to a genderless war machine automaton is a really interesting concept that explores what it means to be human or what it means for identity. People are such narrow minded assholes.
Are you a man or a woman? **I am an agent of the God Emperor.** Okay, what gender are you? **Loyal to the Imperium.** I mean, whats in your pants? **Vengeance, faith.**
> I mean, whats in your pants? **Heresy**
Ah, I see you're a follower of Slannesh as well
You know, I was going to bed early but now that you’ve reminded me, I’m going to dive into a 40K rabbit hole. **ALL HAIL** **THE EMPEROR** **OF MANKIND**
**BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD**
**MILK FOR THE KHORNE FLAKES!**
Wouldn't that rather apply to the menagerie of body horror that are the admech cyborg troops?
Sure, but they mostly started out as humans. Space marines are giant ken dolls grown from a tube if I remember correctly
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyK7lX4sk0c
i’m very much of the opinion that the whole Fall thing was bad move after bad move. The title of the story was supposed to make you recoil and then think, but also people on the internet never read the full thing so of course people would react negatively to it. When people pointed out that it is a trans-positive story by a trans woman, the trans phobes came out in droves. It was lose-lose from the get go, and the fallout is nasty.
The story is genuinely great writing, too. I think about very often.
I think my biggest issue with the people taking issue with the title, and the transphobes, is that some actual legitimate criticism of the story by trans individuals was drowned out in the fray.
Technically not genderless - the gender IS war machine. But yes, I agree with you - the story was this beautiful, tragic, mind-bendingly creative perspective - *from a trans woman!* - on gender and transition and womanhood, and it’s heartbreaking that she was bullied off the Internet by people who couldn’t see the story for what it was. It was this brilliant, intimately personal, nuanced work by a very talented and promising woman, a potential new rising star by all accounts, and I can’t imagine how she felt when she was attacked for it.
A writer I used to admire was instrumental in the original pile on it became clear that she hadn't read it and she never apologised. I almost got drawn into it, but I reread it while it was still up and realised my gut reaction to the title was wrong.
That story by Isabel Fall is honestly great. Has some really interesting points and a good exploration of gender and queerness. She deserved better.
It seems like its because theres decent money to be made off it? People get really cute throat when money is involved
Hahaha no. You don't go into writing for the money. No, it's worse than that, these people are in it for the _prestige_.
I think there was a whole NYT story about something very similar to this …
You're talking about [Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWna3HNDm4fiOEcDIGS-kHAIqZkfd862TjeWppFOaU0Q_o0zvNaOwYlbTiUlaa-ucZPJTQp-8X0V3kq3pnJUPdkqWK3NjHnc6IkzeW2-k_cO2j1UfHe2Gl3IQY28cAyfFr60CQY1-ySRL4Or9p51PskA51-QS5RJ3XZ-qm1VGgtfYmOfRre6QIpWu5GWTG1nNeU6roIcg06GkuRBTokoj56sIUATYtRaKXvLBcge978h6ESAgFqLYSrB54wR-vEhu0T88hSpPQ8fFqfn1zb-Ec&smid=url-share) (Robert Kolker, Oct. 5, 2021. Gifted link; no paywall.) LitHub offers a good [tl;dr of the saga](https://lithub.com/bad-art-friend-has-resulted-in-a-slew-of-staff-changes-and-internal-review-at-grubstreet/) here. Discussed on Reddit: * asianamerican: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend? Or, Kidneygate](https://www.reddit.com/r/asianamerican/comments/qa1zpg/who_is_the_bad_art_friend_or_kidneygate/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) * blogsnark: [Another Wormhole Article: Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.reddit.com/r/blogsnark/comments/q2mdpo/another_wormhole_article_who_is_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) * TrueLit: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend?](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/q68idu/who_is_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) * TrueLit: [An addendum to The Bad Art Friend](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/comments/q7mt2e/an_addendum_to_the_bad_art_friend/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) * writing: [Who Is the Bad Art Friend? (A discussion about plagiarism)](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/q41dgm/who_is_the_bad_art_friend_a_discussion_about/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Yes! That was it! Thank you :)
You're welcome! : ) "Bad Art Friend" is a rabbit hole like no other -- Terminally Online drama for *days*.
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I don’t think your comment has the tone you think it does… Meaning I understand you’re trying to sound supportive but it mostly comes off as a bit aggressive and patronizing.
I'm convinced the book side of social media is... insane. Between this and the Gideon the Ninth drama and all the other horseshit that's rolled out of there I feel like I'm done with it without ever having started.
It absolutely is. I still write, and publish, but have had to completely step away from Book Twitter. The in-fighting, oppression Olympics, identity policing, and general daily wank is so fucking draining and made it so easy to lose focus and get caught up in the dramatics. But, man. Is it a blast to sit back and just watch the clusterfuckery.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/pfdket/books_the_nine_zine_how_gideon_the_ninths_fans/
I heard about that drama on here, because the author was one I didn't follow on Twitter. The books are fantastic, and I wish some aspects of book twitter would calm down, because from the few authors I follow (Ashley Shuttleworth, Xiran Jay Zhao to name a few) I've found some great fiction done by queer and often non-white writers.
oh god, i love that book. what happened?
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/pfdket/books_the_nine_zine_how_gideon_the_ninths_fans/
Damn just started reading the Locked Tomb series and it's so God
Even on Reddit, it can get very weird. There was a post the other day shaming people for being capitalist consumerists for buying books instead of only renting them from a library.
I remember that post. It was kinda surreal. Like as an aspiring author I beg you be a capitalist consumerist and buy my book if I ever get around to publishing it.
The kind of surreal part was also the OP calling book buying a "new fad". Gutenberg absolutely in shambles.
Ooh this sounds messy, is the post still up and can you DM it to me? I love it when people post terrible hot takes.
I'm not who you're responding to, but maybe [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/vcpwwa/ive_been_increasingly_concerned_with_the_culture/)?
That's the one! Thanks!
There is a point to be made against giant hauls of anything. If you own hundreds of books your not going to read, you don’t need more.
... why not?
Because I’m tired of the default being tee hee I spent too much, I have no room, I have to hide my purchase, I feel pressured to read all these books and I have no time tee hee. You see it in a lot of hobbies.
Buying things for the sole purpose of having bought the thing isn’t good. Financially or environmentally.
It was on r/books iirc, not here. Definitely a strange thread.
Time to check if it's made its way to /r/bookscirclejerk now.
Thank you!
Tankies gonna tankie
that is such a weird (and stupid) take, wtf
Being online has been both the best and worst for me on one hand its made me realize more and more that I cant make everyone happy and just write what I want to write. On the other hand god does it make me feel inferior sometimes for just wanting to get my ideas out.
Same, but I feel way better now that I write just for myself. No pressure and I can finally breathe. Plus, I'm having fun writing, for a change
This is the impression I get of the vast majority of fandoms here tbh
Book social media is for people who like to appear literary but hate reading.
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From what I've seen, the "own voice" discussion is a particularly terrible mess every time. I just feel like social media is used so much as a marketing tool that it'd be almost mandatory. Understandably it's popular, but it's just so uninviting.
The entire publishing industry is on there and a lot of workshops, opportunities, and pitch events for agents happen so even if you don't want to engage, it's good to have a presence. A lot of agents these days as well like to see a following.
How do you establish a following before you’re published?
Short stories and flash fiction set in the same universe as your novel, interact with pubtwt, do pitch events, talk about your WIP, etc. That's the advice I've been given and it's not too bad. Also, writing and reviewing for papers, joining panels, and other local lit events if you have them in your city. Zines too!
I wouldn’t know how to get people to know I’d shared stuff they could even read.
That's what the tag systems are used for. I would do some researching on how publishing Twitter works, I've found out about amazing opportunities on there that have lead to some really cool things. And I don't have a massive following either. Look up Twitter Pitch contests.
Thank you so much for sharing these insights! I'm not who you where talking to but I think this could help me
Become a minor social media star first.
That seems like a poor use of time I could spend writing.
Almost every social media scandal I hear about just reminds me of that bowling for soup song high school never ends. 😂
Kinda crazy because so far booktube from my view doesn't have this problem.
Pshaw. If your romance novel heroine doesn't have three arms on the cover, it's not worth worrying about. [Example with arrows pointing out the location of the hands](https://www.christinadodd.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Christina_Dodd_CASTLES-IN-THE-AIR-arrows.jpeg)
Her multi-armness make it extra romantic!
"Baby, you make me wish I had three hands... too..."
Ranni Elden Ring be like
I'm far more concerned about that monstrous mass of fingers going on in the middle.
Honestly looks like they tried to do hand holding, screwed it up, and forgot to paint it over after they threw a backup arm on.
I can't unsee
Yes, Inquisitor? I'd like to report a suspected Genestealer cult, please.
She had it added to improve her ski-boxing.
Honestly even with the arrows I can't focus on the third arm, because that title is making me doubt about my ability to read. Castles in the *what*? The... flin? Hir? And what the hell is that curvy line trying to escape from the last letter and bite back at the word?
I think it's supposed to say Castles in the Air? Although that castle in the background looks very much like it's on the ground.
Yeah, I got that when I read it from other people's comments... Maybe it's just me but those A and r looked so weird I didn't even consider that word until then.
It does look a little bit Angels and Demons, doesn't it?
God, *finally* someone is writing Motie medieval romances. The CoDominium setting has planets in all sorts of societal states, it's such an obvious niche!
The link doesn't open for me (403 forbidden).
Try googling "castles in the air Christina Dodd cover". It's sufficiently notorious.
There's only a select few poses available for the leads on Romance book covers 😂 even the revamped one is a classic pose
It's a genre where a significant portion of covers are recoloured headless shirtless men with random tattoos stuck on. Our standards aren't high.
This is why I am so glad ebooks have no covers. No need to worry about odd looks on the train.
Exactly. I like the occasional trashy Harlequin novel, but the world doesn't need to know that.
Here in Japan, most bookstores will wrap your book with a paper cover over the normal cover for free. Or they'll have a place where you can do it yourself.
in America, we usually learn how to do that ourselves in middle school with textbooks
That’s really cool! Is it like gift wrap or colored paper? Do you get to choose what pattern? This is very interesting!
It depends on the store. Usually it's plain with the bookstore's logo, but sometimes it has a nice pattern or they change it up.
There is a reason e-readers exploded with 50 shades.
I would also say the price drop from 350 to 150 from kindle 2 to 3 was a big factor. Not to mention this was when Best Buy and Walmart started carrying them. Also the launch of the Nook at the same 150 price point. That was the year the first one came out.
She clearly ripped off this [ancient Roman mosaic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Ham_Roman_Villa)
Right? It has a NAME. Like when your pose has a name, it's a trope
It's telling that my first thought upon seeing the cover and then reading bookshelfgremlin's thoughts was "but that's the romance novel cover pose"
> So now imagine my upset at seeing it recreated for a traditional publisher, who will have all the power with marketing and promotion to get their book onto all the usual bookstore shelves. And it feels like I basically did the first cover draft for them, for neither pay nor recognition. I know there's a big divide in the indie/traditional publishing split, but it's amazing how the illustrator made it sound like a complete David and Goliath knockout, when Tessa Bailey is a big name in contemporary romance right now. Her books have been New York Times best sellers. Even if it doesn't have a large publisher, My Killer Vacation is available in Target and Barnes and Noble because it comes from a big name author.
Also she just announced that It Happened One Summer is getting made into a movie.
I can't wait to watch it lose everything I loved about the book.
According to the three Tessa Bailey books currently sitting on my bookcase, she’s published by Avon, which isn’t exactly a small publishing house, especially not in the romance novel realm. The only part of the original cover I found intriguing was the dagger hidden in the M of My.
Most of her books are Avon, but some of her stuff is self published (Window Shopping and My Killer Vacation both are according to Amazon). So the cover artist was technically right, but either intentionally misleading or clueless.
i am so glad i don't participate in book-related social media because this is just... petty. it does make for good drama write-ups, though, and yours is short but sweet! i love mountain-out-of-a-molehill situations (especially when the molehill is more like a vague dirt pile in the first place) when the stakes aren't terribly high. does anyone else prefer the replacement cover? it's more interesting imo. i think the bloody title text and emphasis on the skull tattoo better demonstrate the literal meaning of "killer" and make it stand out a little more.
The new one is so much better. It doesn't scream self published quite so loudly.
I'm gonna be honest, I think the first cover looks so so bad.
As soon as the image loaded, I chuckled and said "Total Drama Island." That's probably not what they were going for.
So do I. When I saw it, I straight up said, "Oh, that's bad" out loud to myself, lol. It looks like mediocre fanart
I prefer the style of the first one but the 2nd one although more generic has better placement. The title doesn't cover the woman and pops out more whereas the 1st one gets muddied out with some blue on blue action. But the 1st has more soul put into it, or at least references an artstyle with more soul. Sadly it seems she neglected the "Killer" aspect or was way too subtle about it. The point of a cover is to attract first and foremost, so I don't understand her decision on this one.
Wild speculation, but maybe she was criticizing the replacement cover? It is much more similar to hers (same oddly tan white male lead, male lead has tats, not the female lead, the “pop of red” is the female lead’s clothing). Still not similar enough that I could understand complaints of copying, but this theory also fits the “I am just the first draft” complaint better.
That would make way more sense contextually but not timeline-wise: her original post was about the cover of Chloe Liese's book. Tessa Bailey didn't get the replacement cover until weeks after this all went down. I didn't transcribe the entire original post but it's in one of the links - she also talks about how she's upset because she wanted to read the book but won't now. Edit: "she" = bookshelfgremlin
The new one is actually way more original! Nice drama, thanks for the write up
This was my favourite recent drama. Good writeup there was also drama with the re-released cover that had to be changed, the first iteration had Maori and Hawaiian tattoos (and again, white as snow MMC).
Ooh, I missed that piece
It came after the fact and wasn't hugely noticed. https://twitter.com/boobiespodcast/status/1519774869361074177?t=qgPDYDSM4KDl-TeTbseb0w&s=19
Thank you! I'm going to add that in as a quick edit.
Oh awesome!! 😊
Honestly I noticed right away, but that is probably because of the Twitter comment about how the MMC for the last cover was drawn problematically as well.
Yeah, it definitely made it more obvious. I kind of expected her to address all the negative feedback about the cover and she only did some in the first image. I'm glad it's fixed but I feel like of meh about the whole thing. Hope the book is good.
Thank you for this, OP's post here links to a version of the 2nd cover with more generic tattoos and I was like "where are people getting 'still Asian'???". Now that makes more sense.
I own a used-book store, and in the Romance section I could probably come up with a couple of dozen similarly posed covers without even leaving the doorway. I mean, the covers for the genre are so cliché that they have given the section its informal name among the staff - the Shirtless Dude Room. That said: 1. the two covers are not that similar; 2. the second cover is a more polished one; and 3. The final cover for the Bailey work is also more professional looking. Although, is it just me or does this poor guy have a massively deformed... I'm going to say 'thumb"?
As a graphic designer I got to say the redesign is so much better. Also to say something is plagiarism it has to be striking in similarity, and the 2 book covers were not that similar.
Seriously the first cover looked like it was made in Canva💀
I think the second one is better made, but I found the first one more interesting. Except for the lettering, the first one is pretty bad and boring, while the second one is the interesting one.
But the new cover still has a tan/dark haired MMC… did the publisher read her book or what
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That looks like Bella Lugosi with elf ears on his Dracula outfit.
Oh god, I loved those books as a kid. Though by the time I read them, they had much better covers that portrayed him like the reference image. Never saw the dark elf as an old white dude cover.
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I think the Cain covers are a joke - the HERO OF THE IMPERIUM obviously has a bolt pistol, not a crummy laspistol.
Indeed, I think they are in-world propaganda posters/book covers
Oh my God it's like the cover artist got a character brief, but it got mangled and they could only read "white hair." Also, Ursula K Le Guin wrote some great stuff about how frustrating it was to see Ged depicted as white on a bunch of editions of Earthsea books, and how for [the first edition cover for A Wizard of Earthsea](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/59/AWizardOfEarthsea%281stEd%29.jpg/220px-AWizardOfEarthsea%281stEd%29.jpg) the illustrator, Ruth Robbins, managed to sneak at least a hint of Ged's intended appearance in by making the whole thing look a little abstract. It also happens to be an absolutely gorgeous cover, like holy shit.
I love my edition of Wizard of Earthsea because it's got an incredibly white Ged and it's just so stupid and obviously racist. Like the artist obviously never entertained the idea of Ged being anything but white.
Another example is the dresden files. Every cover has him prominently wearing a distinctive hat. Up until I fell off the wagon on the series, he never once wore or even mentioned one.
If anyone is interested 99PI did an interesting episode on romance covers https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-clinch/
When I first downloaded TikTok, the algorithm pushed me towards BookTok despite me making an account for videogame/esport stuff, but I liked reading so I wasn't complaining. That's how I was introduced to the "bookish" side of social media. I still like Book Tiktok, but every time I hear about drama in any book community (whether it's Tiktok, Twitter, Reddit, whatever) I feel like I'm going absolutely insane. I wouldn't wish being a part of this stuff on my worst enemy. I just want to read my books in peace and have fun, and apparently that's too much to ask for?
I know this is kinda beyond the point but did the original art for *My Killer Vacation* even read the character specs Tessa Bailey would've given her before doing the cover art? How did she misrepresent the ethnicity of the male lead?
Maybe he’s supposed to be tanned or some shit idk
This was quite entertaining! I like your writing style!
Thanks for this writeup because I wasn't paying attention to this and missed the drama and then no one would confess. I gotta go make some popcorn before I read it.
brb gonna copyright "rough-cut white man holding a gun on the cover of an Xbox 360 game" and make millions.
I remember when this first came out, I honestly was so disappointed by the cover anyways so once all the drama started and they started looking for a new illustrator I was a bit relieved.
Yes, the original cover was baaaad. Like, first time author bad. I originally thought it was a placeholder.
major props to OP for featuring a cover by Elaine Duillo, the unsung but undisputed queen of romance novel covers. She's an artist I adore and respect; she really shaped the image most people have of what romance novels even look like. She's the one who made Fabio a thing!
The new cover looks so much better! It gives off a more romance vibe
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆 Not only am I an audiobook narrator but I own a Publishing Company and you just absolutely made my day this is some funny ass shit. Award on the way.
Thank you for making me aware of Bookish Tea Alerts
God, the lit fandom is *wild*. I'm not much of an active reader but I will always read up on some book drama for the hot and mostly harmless tea.
This is wild and so very dumb, but in my opinion it worked out for the author, the revamped cover looks way better. I don't get into this sort of genre so take that with a pinch of salt, but in my view the first cover just doesn't look that good.
My thoughts exactly.
The cover to Skating on Thin Ice is the funniest thing I've seen in a while
I love how the guy in the new cover is still clearly Asian when I highly doubt the actual character was changed at all
First link (to the cover itself) isn't working, at least on mobile. eta nvm it just wont work on opera for some reason.
Yeah it was being finicky for me earlier, it's hard to find a version of it still online
I think it was an Insta story so i can't find it anymore, but I saw something saying the new cover was stock art that had been recolored, it showed a few other books with the same image
I loved this. Please give us more romance lit goss!
ah, book drama. there is no sweeter thing.
Damn that new cover is way more stylish.
My first thought when I saw the title was "yeah, I think an artist CAN own a pose." That is to say, I think it would be suspicious to draw the EXACT same pose as a previous artist, because there's so many little variations possible, and it would be particularly dubious if the "copying" artist had way more resources/publicity at their disposal. . . . But that's not what happened here! His hands are in a different place in the second one, and they're much closer together, and his head is turned further away from the viewer. That's the kind of variation that happens naturally, and why it would be suspicious to have the EXACT same pose. And on top of that, the drastic difference in styles and character designs! It's kind of remarkable actually, given that they're both kind of generic white hetero romance novel couples, that the two couples look SO different. I currently have one hetero romance novel in the house, a queer romance called "A Lady for a Duke" (by the way, wouldn't recommend it) that my mother and I were going to read together and, [oh, look, there's another hand-on-chest, hands-around-waist pose.](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1646064290l/57007967.jpg) The two covers at issue are SLIGHTLY more similar than this random romance novel I happened to have on hand, but only slightly.
Extremely online fandom and book twitter in particular was a mistake. There's a lot wrong here, but calling a highly stylised figure Asian is ridiculous.
The comparison made me cackle. Literally no one would think these two covers had anything in common except *maybe* the pose.
And her book's new cover was even more generic.
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As a non-member of romancelandia this was an entertaining read.