All tagged Bad Covers

List-O-Rama: 5 Book-Related Trends I Wish Would Stop, Stop Right Now

List-O-Rama: 5 Book-Related Trends I Wish Would Stop, Stop Right Now

Sarah Moon
Listorama

It’s amazing when you start paying attention, how many publishing and book-related things are straight-up annoying after awhile. Some of these are plot devices, some are publishing-related, but they all annoy me and need to stop, stop right now. 

Photo by Sarah.

Delayed Ebook Releases

Okay, I get it. Publishers hold back the ebook releases so their books have a better shot at the bestseller lists. However, as a reader I don’t really care. If a book has a publish date of, say, June 1, I expect to be able to by either the paper book or digital version on that date. Don’t make me wait an extra week or two. This happened a lot with mass market paperbacks this summer and I cannot tell you how irriating it is when publishers (or anyone) make it hard for me to give them money. I can only speak for myself, but this doesn’t make me rush out and buy the paper book instead of the ebook—instead, it means I often forget to buy the ebook when it’s released the following week.

On the other hand, one of the things I’ve been most impressed with from publishers lately is Simon Pulse releasing several books simultaneously as hardcovers, paperbacks and ebooks—letting reader choose what works best for them is smart.

Noelle vs. The Embarrassing Book Covers

Noelle
Opinion

[Editor’s note: Noelle shares with us her story about a fight many a reader has had—to read or not to read books with “those covers.” You know what I’m talking about.]

Round One: Scorn

I have always been a book lover.

I have always been a fan of awesome.

But unfortunately, I haven’t always been so open-minded about certain genres—-especially those with questionable cover designs. Nowadays, I usually subscribe to the Stephon Marbury philosophy that [book] love is [book] love but only a few short years ago, I was that girl side-eyeing your selections in the Barnes & Noble checkout line, rolling my eyes at the ratio of abs to cover space and assuring anyone who would listen that I didn’t read those kind of books.

That is, until I did…

Round Two: Begrudging Curiosity

One of my college roommates was what I affectionately refer to as a Romance Shark. She was unabashedly addicted to romance novels of all kinds and had a multi-state swap network set up with her extended family. I held out for as long as I could but browsing her bookshelves and observing what she was reading was inevitable. 

Slowly but surely, I succumbed to curiosity. After more than a few books were “accidentally” left on the coffee table, my snarking evolved from catcalls at the shirtless dudes on the cover to,

Wait—so he’s a time traveling highlander?

 

and

What’s an urban fantasy?

 

The Romance Shark immediately sensed a weakness in my defenses—-blood in the water, if you will—-and dared me to read one—just one—of those books. 

And, crap… I liked it.