Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Teddy Pig pointed out that the older Coulter and Lindsey covers, on the other hand, “gave those books a specific character,” and he does have a point. The lurid image was a sign of the times . . .

I think he’s exactly right - which is why I tend to avoid them.  Right or wrong, the clinch cover tells me there will not only be Romance inside, there will be angsty, drama-heavy Romance with a hero I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley and a heroine I will likely want to smack upside her head.  I’m sure I’m kind of bigoted in these thoughts but isn’t that what the marketing of clinch covers is?  A brand label, of a specific type of Romance?  Whether it actually fits that label or not is another topic.

Holy Crap!! I was quoted in a post on Smart Bitches!! woohoo.

Okay, now that my 15 seconds of fame are over. . . . (LOL)

“I mean, there’s no doubt that when I leave the buxom clinch covers around the house, Hubby tends to pick them up and take a closer look. The hetero male mind comes to complete synaptic arrest at the sight of boobs.” heh. My hubby too.  Although, as long as he knows it’s a romance I’ll find him flipping through it. And he ain’t looking for the scene when the hero tells the heroine how much he loves her! *wink*

Perhaps that’s why clinches sell. It’s the Marketing Image of Romance Novels, and if you’re shopping without a specific title or author in mind, it’s the cover image that most likely guarantees a romance novel inside.

My take on it is that there is no evidence to back up the assertion that clenches sell, as the theory has never been tested. Everyone I know—without exception!—buys clenches because there is NO OTHER OPTION. It’s not as if the book comes out with multiple covers and I can choose the one I like. If I want to read Author X’s latest release (esp if she writes for Avon) I’m going to have to suck up the horrible clench cover.

Pretty much the only way to “prove” that clenches are the bee’s knees to romance readers would be to create multiple covers for one of the big-name writers and FLOOD the market with both covers, assuring that no matter where the reader shopped she’d have a choice. That’s never going to happen.

It’s like what’s going on with those horrible “upsize” mass market books. Publishers say readers love them. Booksellers and readers say they hate them. WTF? The publisher’s argument is the same as the one being made for clench covers: They sell. But the argument has the same Achilles’ heel: It’s the only format you can buy Big Name Author’s Latest Release in. *shrug*

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, baby.

Kalen- WORD!

I’m at an age/point in my life where I really am not all that embarassed by clinch covers. If the book is good- I’m going to read it. However,there are many good authors out there whose books don’t go that route ( Nora comes to mind here!)

I agree with Kalen- have one famous/best selling author’s book come out with 2 covers- one “clinch”, one not- and see where the sales come down. I would really love to see the results.

And Tracy? I only wish my hubby would pick up one of my books. Perhaps he could pick up some very good ideas
But he avoids them like they carry the plague. *sigh*

I’m intrigued by the idea of a Clinch vs. Other deathmatch; I can think of two (non-romance) books recently published in paperback that were released with different color covers, but the exact same art otherwise:

The Rule of Four, which was released with (I think) four different covers: red background, blue background, silvery background, and cream background. (I bought the silvery one.)

Everything is Illuminated, which had versions available in turquoise, yellow, and (I think) bright pink. (I haven’t purchased this book yet, but when I do, I think I’ll go for the movie tie-in, because none of the colors appeal to me—too bright!)

I’m not sure why these books were released with these different covers, unless it was intended for display purposes (displaying a big bunch of books together in a window or on a table and varying the colors or something). I have no idea whether the publisher tracked sales for each color.

But to get back to the original discussion, I’m with LorelieLong: I don’t buy clinch covers in part because I associate them with outdated generic mores to which I am allergic.

And I might not have made it clear here, but I mentioned in Tracie’s survey that most of the reason I don’t like covers with paintings or pictures of people on them is that it interferes with my ability to imagine the characters’ appearance based on the descriptions within the book. (This is true only for novels; with non-fiction books, I want as many photos or paintings as possible, so I know what everyone looks like.)

Right or wrong, the clinch cover tells me there will not only be Romance inside, there will be angsty, drama-heavy Romance with a hero I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley and a heroine I will likely want to smack upside her head.

That’s part of the impression I get, too.  It’s not the implied sex that mortifies me.  It’s the implication that the contents are equally cheesy… and the completely crap taste.  The clinch looks terribly dated both visually and culturally--it’s like a 1970s kitsch porn aesthetic combined with an I-hope-that-era-never-existed take on male/female relationships.

I sorta suspect publishers laugh their tits off every time they put out another cover straight out of Barbarella.  I mean, srsly, they might as well slap on a sticker saying “Warning: camp!”

there is no evidence to back up the assertion that clenches sell, as the theory has never been tested. Everyone I know—without exception!—buys clenches because there is NO OTHER OPTION.

Yep!

I don’t think making 2 covers for a book would be prohibitive for a lot of the books I read.  I mean, looking back on your cover snark, do you really think the publishers are paying tons and tons of money for these crappy covers? 

So Regency Air Head with tasteful (not pink) fan on cover and Regency Air Head w/ half of said air head cut off at the top of the book and a dress cut down to the butt crack. . .  Give a person a choice. 

So that those of us who are subject to public humiliation because of our taste in reading material would only get nailed by people who recognized the author.

If the idea is to sell books, maybe giving folks what they want would be helpful?

I do not rule out that I was inundated with the clinch cover and my first Romance reading had the clinch cover so I have a bias.

I notice the clinch cover and sure even in the 80s it made me cringe but I now associate it with old style romance.

Just like I associate the new more erotic romance with the naked photorealistic mantitty covers we all know so well.

When I see naked mantitty photo of single man in kilt I immediately think here be explicit sex scenes and possible buttsecks.

When I see two naked mantitties with woman in state of undress on the cover I expect major buttsecks and possible man on man action.

I am with pretty much everyone on here...hate the clinch covers!  Hate them, hate them, hate them.

In fact, I only buy romance books online for this very reason. And I only read romance in my bedroom with the door closed. Those books never make it out onto the couch in my living room. And when I am done with the books they go in a drawer b/c heaven forbid my schoolage children should find them.

It really is not all about being embarrassed of the art...it is really people assuming (family included) that it is a worthless book with sex only and horrid writing.

One neighbor friend saw an historical romance on my bookshelf, and then proceeded to tell me all the ‘wonderful’ authors she needed to recommend to me. Clearly implying that I was missing out on much better fare or just completely ignorant that any good books existed. It was insulting. And directly due to the clinch covers that give people the assumption that the content within is pure drivel.

Every editor and former editor I’ve talked to has said one thing: Clinch covers sell. Always along the lines of “We don’t like clinch covers either, and we tried, we really TRIED more tasteful covers. Did. Not. Work.” Now bestselling names will sell bestselling names. But my name won’t sell squat. My name interwoven with pretty flowers won’t sell squat. My name printed in small type above a naked man? That’s what I’m talking about.

NY pubs aren’t in the business of keeping women in their place. They’re in the business of selling as many books as they can. Think about it. If they could sell more books with less embarrassing covers, do you think they wouldn’t do it??? Do you think they wouldn’t have already tried? Personally, I distinctly remember the surge of flowery covers (early 90’s?). I liked it, myself. Too bad.

But how do they know this didn’t work? They don’t really do any surveying of their reading audience, so I just don’t buy it.

Also, this was in the 90s, before Amazon, before online reviews, before all sorts of info was available. All readers had was the bookshelf in B. Dalton books. Now, it is extremely easy to find information on new authors, new books, etc.

I would even prefer the double cover...with the bland flower or bird on the outside, with the clinch on the inside cover. That gives both types of readers something....

But how do they know this didn’t work? They don’t really do any surveying of their reading audience, so I just don’t buy it.

There is no survey. There is just sales!

I like your point about how things have changed these days. But you can’t say that every single historical cover out there right now is a clinch cover. Not true. All editors have to do is compare book A to book B, assuming they are smart enough to use good info about name recognition and previous sales, etc.. I think tasteful covers work for some types of historical romances, and some names, because those covers are being used.

But again, I ask, if they think they could make more money, do you think they wouldn’t try it?
Makes no sense.

People are busy. They don’t spend hours at the bookstore, picking out just the perfect book for next weekend. They don’t research every purchase online before heading for the store. (And online sales don’t even come CLOSE to in store sales.) They want to grab the 3 or 4 books they’ll read that week before their kids start screaming that they’re bored. Clinch covers ARE shorthand, and life is only moving faster!

I don’t mind clinch covers. They can be well done and very sexy. Of course I mind badly done clinch covers, but I mind when ANYTHING is badly done.

There is no survey. There is just sales!

Or I could’ve said “There are only sales!” if I wanted to sound smart. Or I could just change the first part to “There ain’t no surveys!” to make it all match up! Ding, dang, ya’ll!

I think Teddy Pig addresses a good point in that I believe there is a kind of “code” to covers that publishers somehow settled on.  There’s more to it than just semi-naked people.  Whether there’s one person or more, how the models are dressed and posed and several other little things all add up to giving a pretty specific impression of what one can expect to find inside the cover.

That “code” works for and against books in other genres, too.

I think it would be very interesting were someone to approach designing covers for the various sub-types of romance in the same way that covers for “literature” are designed.  What would happen if an artist were banned from using hearts, flowers, ribbons, people ‘dressed’ in leather/vinyl, kilts or period gowns?

Are publishers really saying that books like Bet Me don’t sell?  Or that until a writer can sell as much as someone like Crusie (or Roberts or Graham or the few others writing romances who aren’t sold with clinch covers) that they’re not willing to give up the code and take a chance with something else?

Are publishers really saying that books like Bet Me don’t sell?

But Bet Me isn’t an historical romance. In fact, the Bet Me cover is clear code for women’s fiction/romantic comedy. I expect that when my funny contemps come out, they will have a similar cover. Also, Crusie’s name is it’s own code.

it’s

Or “its”. Okay, i’ll stop. But please tell me I am not the only writer with a serious hang up about making these kinds of mistakes in front of others. *shudder* My books have clinch covers. I have to be vigilant!

I’m beginning to wonder if creative use of stepback covers (discreet outside, fun/raunchy clench imagery inside) would be the best of both worlds… (How much do stepbacks add to the cost of books, anyway?)

Also, Kalen: by “‘upsize’ mass market books” do you mean the trade paperback format? I actually do like those. (I thought at first you might be referring to the tendency in modern fantasy fiction to put out brick-sized volumes.)

I hate trade paperback - but that said - clinch covers aren’t new to romance. Steinbeck and Hemingway (before they were enshrined) had plenty of their own pulpy covers because they were marketed as pulp novels. The LOOK! READ ME!! I’M NOT LITERATURE!! cover has a much longer tradition than the rise in romance circa 1970.

Even if some of it does turn out to be literature.

I don’t care for the covers either, but it does say “I am Fun To Read, this is not about Dead Children and Deep Junk” I wonder if in the future people will pay crazy money to collect Fabio covers (as they do 40’s pulp novels) with art books, magnets and other retrospectives issued. I hope it’s AFTER I’m dead.

I think Kalen’s point about the big ol’ paperback books (are you talking NOT trade, but the oversized, tall mass markets?) is actually an argument that pubs will try anything if they think it will make more money. Meaning they are trying those tall paperbacks. They can try to pull one over on the readers, I suppose, but if it’s really not working and making them MORE money, they will stop eventually.

IMHO, this is what they tried with flowery historicals in the 90’s. They tried it. Did. Not. Work. Except for bestselling, established authors, which is why they still use it for them.

I’m not saying pubs are infallible. Not at all. Look at that Forbidden Shores cover. They broke the code. The author wasn’t happy and readers were pissed.

“So I ask myself: which came first, the romance or the clinch cover?”

I’m fairly sure that romance came first, and that the clinch cover only came in with a particular style of romance.

Twentieth-century gothic romances had their own particular style of cover (usually a lone heroine in an isolated spot with a mysterious/sinister-looking building behind her, like this and this). The old-looking Heyer covers (on individual pages linked to from here) don’t have clinches. Barbara Cartland’s novels tended to have covers where the lovers are embracing, but both are fully dressed and the heroine is drawn with absolutely massive eyes.

And the clinches do seem to be mostly a single-title phenomenon, because as far as I can tell, there haven’t been as many on Harlequin covers. There are also national variations, because the covers often change when the novel is published in a different market. So, for example here’s Loretta Chase’s Miss Wonderful with its American cover and here’s the cover of the UK edition.

Victoria, that’s kinda’ my point: why can’t historicals be given a shot at covers that aren’t what we see all the time?  Because it falls outside the code. 

Publishers say books without the clinch covers don’t sell, but I find it hard to believe.  It seems just plain idiotic if they’re really saying they can’t make money using tasteful covers for romance books because they won’t sell otherwise.  Are they seriously suggesting that the 50%+ share of all books sold is going to be significantly reduced were people actually unembarrassed to be seen in public reading them?  It seems to me that people are actually buying 50% of all books sold DESPITE the covers, not because of them.

Would the kind of thinking that produced a cover like Bet Me‘s really be that out of place on an historical?  I’m not speaking here of the color or content of Bet Me‘s cover, more the philosophy behind its creation: the cover gives a clue about the content, but in a way that someone who hasn’t read it wouldn’t understand.  The person who hasn’t read it understands the genre thanks to the colors employed, the use of shoes, etc. (as you said, the code for that genre).  So in all it works on more than one level: first to draw people in and give that all-important first impression that dictates so many of a person’s reactions to something, then later it adds something subtle to the mix to help make the book a little greater than the sum of its parts.  Has there ever been an historical romance cover that’s provided the same service for the story inside?  Given the behemoth that the romance genre is in the world of publishing, it’s a little astonishing to me that I can’t think of one.

And finally, I’d really love to know the names of the books that were published without the stereotypical covers that enjoyed such disappointing sales that its meant the perpetuation of the sterotypes for so many years.

fiveandfour,

I think it’s an issue that when you have name recognition and a large following the more tasteful fonts and objects covers work because the sale is made based on the name.

I think the clinch covers and the mantitty covers are made to sell based on, as you so aptly clarified it, “the code”.

The more likely unknown writer gets sold with the clearly defined Romance cover.

Yes, Teddy Pig. It’s all about the code. And the code won’t work unless the messages are distinct. They tried cartoon covers on historicals. It didn’t work well, for obvious reasons.

Now I can get behind the idea that the code should be changed, but I’m not entirely sure the publishers would be willing to sacrifice a couple years’ profits on that experiment.

Well the historicals are getting more erotic and the photo mantitty is coming with them so I do think the code changes.

I meant should it be changed to something more tasteful. *g*

At this point, I’m happy to see the code has expanded (for historicals) to include backs of dresses, etc. It seems to me as if pubs ARE trying out new types of covers and pushing the code. (Look at Pam Rosenthal’s covers. Lovely.) Some of the arguments here seem to assume that if they would just TRY, they would see the light. They try out new covers all the time. But the numbers make clear, regardless of what us smart bitches feel, that clinches sell, so they won’t be dropped.

(are you talking NOT trade, but the oversized, tall mass markets?)

I was under the impression that the ~5-6” W x ~8” H size *was* called a trade paperback, and that the smaller size was called a mass market paperback.

Ah, the terminology gets so confusing!

Anyway, I thought Kalen was referring to the larger format used on things like the Raymond Chandler reissues.

A British publisher tried putting out new editions of Jane Austen with “chick lit covers” last year.

See story here.

I haven’t heard whether the venture was successful or not, though.  Does anyone know?

To me this boils down to a question of whether clinch covers sell because readers like them or because they are code for Romance.  I’ve long believed it’s because of the code, although I know some readers do like them, as well.  I even like some of them, although I didn’t feel that way until I became a reader of the genre and could see them from inside the paradigm, so to speak.

If clinch covers sell because they’re code for Romance, a publisher or two “experimenting” with other covers will yield a predictable short term failure.  If every publisher got rid of clinch covers tomorrow, though, the code would change because there would be no clinch covers to announce themselves as Romance on the shelves next to covers with flowers or beach chairs or abstract figures. 

As it stands, though, I will defend the content of the genre, but those clinch covers (or similarly the shirtless duke in the middle of winter type covers) make me more than understand why those who see nothing but these covers believe that Romance isn’t a genre to take seriously.  I know that’s harsh, but I find it incredibly difficult to defend those covers to the casual observer, especially when, IMO, they are the most prominent public image of the genre.

I just found a dialogue on Amazon about this very topic...I’ll bet publishers would like to know that many of the people commenting use book covers, so that they can read in public places or hide the book behind something else...another book or magazine.

Is this what publishers want their readers to be doing? Hiding the name of the book and the author?

I get that these raunchy covers are supposedly based on sales, but do we really have to have them be so horridly bad? Can’t they be classier? With less boobage falling out of dress and mantitty up the ying-yang?

They could be clinching, but in a less body-torturing, skin baring way.

I don’t know. There just has to be a way to improve this. Why would publishers want embarrassed readers????

I will defend the content of the genre, but those clinch covers (or similarly the shirtless duke in the middle of winter type covers) make me more than understand why those who see nothing but these covers believe that Romance isn’t a genre to take seriously.

Robin,
I think that people will “think” what they want to “think” anyway. I do not believe people complaining counts if sales figures say different.

If you want to change something do not buy it. In any business ignoring something is far more a death blow than negative press.

Yes, Brandi, the extra-tall mass market books (usually costing around $10) are what I was talking about. Lots of places call them “upbacks”.

And, Vicki, you know I love you, but I disagree with you. Or maybe it’s just that I can’t get over how awful—and wrong!!!—the clothing on the clenches usually is? Perhaps if the characters were wearing historically accurate clothing I wouldn’t loathe them as much (or at all)? The one thing I do know is that they put off all the women I know.

The worse the cover, the more likely I am to buy it, to be honest. So clinches don’t bother me much.

That said, I don’t read them in public either. Often. And I never buy them new, because I am too cheap.

I’ll even go out on a limb and say I prefer the clinch covers to the standard ‘chick lit’ cover...I get irritated by them all trying to be funky in the exact same way, and the ones with stylised women shopping/shoes really get me - but then I don’t like chick lit much at all, which probably colours my view somewhat.

50% of all books sold

You might want to check the Dear Author post on book sales. Romances make up about 21% of all books sold.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem to some extent. Publishers use the cover code because it sells books. It sells books because you look at the cover and you know what the book is. And so the publishers continue to use the cover code.

Go into a bookshop. Look around the fiction section. Don’t look at the genre labels, just look at the covers on the face-out books. You know just from the cover art what you’re getting. Both genre and sub-genre. I *know* that when I’m in a hurry at a train station, I can go into Smiths and not even have to look at the shelf labels to find the sort of thing I want to read; all I have to do is look at the covers, and that’ll narrow it down *fast*. To get out of clinch and man-titty covers, we’re going to have to learn a whole new code, and a publisher trying that is taking a gamble.

I’m not sure I want to know what Teddy thinks of when he sees my covers…

Jules,

You mean Lord and Master?

Tender twinky titty tweakers.

They could be clinching, but in a less body-torturing, skin baring way.

Yes!  For example:  The Raven Prince, by Elizabeth Hoyt.  They’re clinched.  They’re so clinched her clothes are falling off.  Still?  Totally hot.  Totally says Romance.

Oh and the Dolphin one I started singing to myself…

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning, no-one you see, is smarter than he…

Teddy Pig, you are a bad, bad man.

And you’ve probably just earwormed everyone with the Flipper theme tune. (Except me, because I don’t actually know it.)

50% of all books sold

You might want to check the Dear Author post on book sales. Romances make up about 21% of all books sold.

I think the 50% is “of all new fiction titles” (I know I’ve seen that number bandied about, but I can’t find the source at them moment *grumble*). So you may both be right, you’re just talking about a different statistic.

Romance: $1.37 billion
Religion/inspirational: $1.68 billion (includes Bibles, so it’s a bit misleading)
Science fiction/fantasy: $495 million
Classic literary fiction: $448 million
Mystery: $422 million

So Sci-fi/fantasy + Literary + Mystery = (roughly) $1.405 billion, or just a tad more than Romance by itself.

You might want to check the Dear Author post on book sales. Romances make up about 21% of all books sold.

Hmmm...I guess I was using old information.  Kind of interesting that the romance genre is just behind the religion/inspirational genre for sales according to the report mentioned at Dear Author.  Sort of like those legends about the old west where there’d be a church on every corner and a tavern across the street from every church.

Teddy Pig, I’m thinking that if we did a Rohrshack sort of test on you using romance covers instead of ink blots I wouldn’t stop laughing for days.

“All books” includes Bibles, cook books, Rock Polishing for Dummies, etc. It’s more relevant to talk about “all fiction”. And romance does make up something damn close to 50% of that.

I have two sets of the actual Rorschach tests. From what I hear this is supposedly a big no no for a lay person to have these.

Did you know some of them are in color?

One of these days I am gonna blow mega bucks and get them individually framed for the living room wall over the couch like a big art installation

My research psychologist of 6 years, Dr. Riddle, died of AIDS and left me them in his will.

Yes, I have been written up in 3 reports he published on the psychological impact of HIV infection. He told me he did it too.

I replied that I hoped he only said nice things about me.

One of these days I am gonna blow mega bucks and get them individually framed for the living room wall over the couch like a big art installation.

That sounds amazing! Talk about somethign to inspire a cocktail party. LOL!

The 21% is of “net revenue from retail sources in the U.S.” It doesn’t indicate what percentage of the total number of books sold are romances. Probably that’s a much higher percentage, since romances tend to be relatively cheap compared to other books. And if you looked at the number of romance books sold compared to other types of fiction, I’d imagine the percentage would be higher still.

Teddy is right: only a lack of sales affects a publisher—which is why I don’t buy clinch covers. From this thread, it sounds like quite a few romance readers are buying the books *despite* the clinch covers, which is a distinction lost on the publishers. They only see sales. Ergo, if you don’t like clinch covers, don’t buy them, period. That’s the only way to change the way the genre operates.

Ergo, if you don’t like clinch covers, don’t buy them, period. That’s the only way to change the way the genre operates.

Great in theory, but it’s unlikely to yield the longed-for result. The way the publishers are more likely to interpret the lack of sales is that readers are not interested in the AUTHOR. They’d actually have to do RESEARCH beyond the obvious to find out that the lack of sales was due to the shitty cover, and they aren’t going to do that. Ask any of the authors out there who’ve gotten stuck with a truly awful cover. Even when the publisher will admit the cover was a mistake, they won’t take the blame for poor sales. It’s the poor author who gets blamed/shafted.

Well, I guess some people aren’t attracted by my covers. I’m just looking through my site logs, and apparently AltaVista managed to pick me as its random link for a while a couple of nights ago. The visitors that sent my way mostly seem to have clicked away again in a hurry…

Well with eBooks Jules the covers are much more correctable.

I see EC updating their covers constantly before putting something older with say a poser cover into print.

Good thing too!

I think this is yet another rule that eBooks get to break. The covers are much more replaceable if the story is good.

I was telling a friend of mine yesterday to just have April do a cover she likes for her so that she could slap on after she gets the contract back. Because most often you cannot keep the cover anyway.

They could be clinching, but in a less body-torturing, skin baring way.

Yes!  I’ve seen a few clinch covers (sadly, only a few) where the clinch is tastefully done.  As LorelieLong pointed out, The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt is a prime example of a clinch cover that isn’t cheesy or defies physics.  The clinch may be a visual code, but Hoyt’s cover is one where the code isn’t cringe-worthy. 

And I don’t know what book cover god blessed P.C. Cast, but I’d love to see more covers like hers on other books.

Teddy Pig—the other thing with eBooks, of course, is that a cover that works on a monitor is not necessarily one that works on dead trees. Monitors (mostly) generate their own light. Print books are viewed in reflected light, and in widely varying lighting conditions. So you could have something that looks really good on a TFT screen, and that sucks on a print book.

Wonder if we could drag ALG in here to talk about covers…

I can’t help but wonder if pre-1970s sleaze paperbacks (you know, the ones with the truly lurid covers suggestive of egregious, even criminal sexual behaviors) aren’t the precursors of romance clinch covers.  Those books were intended for male readers.

I think it’s entirely possible for romance fiction to maintain the shorthand of cover graphics without going to tasteless extremes.  In fact, it’s already being done.  The cover for my EC novel Plagued is a model of subtlety, yet it conveys a kind of moody, angsty sensuality. I’ve seen quite a number of ebook covers that have managed to feature appealing, intertwined bods without making them look like they’re about to erupt.

I can’t help but wonder if pre-1970s sleaze paperbacks (you know, the ones
with the truly lurid covers suggestive of egregious, even criminal sexual
behaviors) aren’t the precursors of romance clinch covers. Those books
were intended for male readers.

Wry Hag,

You know how much money those pulp fiction novels go for these days? I know gays and lesbians that spend BIG BUCKS collecting those and they actually are kinda cool.

I think the same will happen with the Fabio clinch covers. Eventually people will collect them and new authors will want to use the style as something retro and fun.

I have two sets of the actual Rorschach tests. From what I hear this is supposedly a big no no for a lay person to have these.

Did you know some of them are in color?

Huh - didn’t know either of those things.  I just realized I made a typo on the name Rohrshach earlier...it loses a little of its mystique with a “k” at the end, doesn’t it?  Takes it a little closer to “Horseshack”.

Anyway.  Unfortunately, I agree that not buying a book based on its cover does more harm to the author than send a message to the publisher.

It’s kind of like those people who leave little cards for waiters and waitresses instead of tips explaining why they didn’t get a tip - it hurts the wait staff at the time and effects no change to the tipping culture at large (though in this case the reason for the lost sale isn’t communicated to the publisher so they’re free to interpret the stiffing however it makes sense to them).

Now I’m even more frustrated by this issue because it seems the only way this can be decided would be if a publisher took a chance and tested the market with alternate covers.  And who would willingly step up to the plate on an experiment like that when one of the assumptions going into it is that fewer sales will result?

I think the same will happen with the Fabio clinch covers.

Well, shoot!  I’ve been meaning to take my Fabio-illustrated version of The Shadow and the Star off for donation...guess I should re-thing that plan.

Re-think, not re-thing.  The letter “k” is apparently not my friend:  popping up here, disappearing there.  What did I ever do to you, letter “k”?

I will admit the first romance novel I ever read—Until You by Judith McNaught, for those who are curious—did not actually have a clinch cover. It had one of those early 90s covers with an oyster shell and a pearl. Yes, I probably ought to have guessed the connotations but I was eleven years old and just thought it was pretty. ;)

I do distinctly remember one clinch cover (at least sort of, although I don’t think either of the people were nearly as naked as others seem to be) and it was for this awful novel set during the Third Crusade where the woman in question was sold as a Saracen slave...I think it was called Love’s Fiery Dagger, and it was fairly awful.

The truth is that these little experiments go on all the time. Not controlled experiments, but… There are romances released all the time with tasteful covers. Flowers, fabrics, a close up of a hand on a arm… something like that. So if the vast majority of romance readers HATES clinch covers, wouldn’t those tasteful books sell measurably better? Yes, there is a code, but if you are specifically searching for a romance with a subtle cover, you’d zero in on it. If those tasteful books got snatched up in record numbers, do you think every editor wouldn’t be DEMANDING that their authors get the tasteful covers? Come on.