Escapists Uncensored with Casey

In which I rant about the evolution of romance book covers

I was recently talking with one of my aunts about book covers. She was still under the impression that book covers were painted pictures. I gently reminded her that there is now a thing called “digital photography.” Yes, the technology has brought about a few changes to the book cover industry. We were finally able to see pictures of real muscly men, not painted pictures that depict the men as sort of blocky and square-ish. (So not sexy. Not even human looking.)

Yes, the digital age has brought us, what I like to call, man-candy covers. It’s perfect, really. I see a book cover with a half-naked hottie and I’m instantly in love. I’ll buy it just to stare at the cover and maybe, one day I’ll eventually get around to reading it. (A perfect example of that would be Blood of the Wicked by Karina Cooper. I bought the book for his abs. The story turned out to be amazing, which was just a plus. *grin*)

Life was going along wonderfully with that ritual. I had more man-candy then I could ever possibly read, but my eyes were happy and constantly begging for more because they’re greedy like that. And I was always happy to oblige. But then, something terrible happened. Something truly horrendous! A highly publicized series came along, with covers of inanimate objects.

“Other people may be going gaga over that, but I am safe with my man-candy,” I thought to myself.  Boy, was I wrong.

One dark and stormy night, everyone who is anyone in the publishing industry met in an old abandoned warehouse. And in this super secret meeting they decided that this new series was only getting it’s popularity because of the inanimate objects on the cover. “We must do the same! We will reprint all of our old books with these new covers, and print all our new books with these covers. There will be inanimate objects everywhere! We will make millions of dollars!” And they proceeded to do just that.

I walked into the bookstore one day, and suddenly my man-candy was gone! Instead I was looking at fruit and ties and flowers and torn ribbon and shoes but NO SEXY MEN! NONE. NADA. ZIP. ZILCH. I fell to my knees on the ground, but raised one lonely shaking my fist at the Publishing Gods above. How could they do this to me?! How could they betray me? Rob me of all my man-candy and demand that I be satisfied with fruit.  Sure, we still have urban fantasy books, with women on the covers, posed so ridiculously and bad-assy. But it’s not the same. Mostly because they’re women and I’m being picky and only want MAN-candy.

Honestly, if I didn’t already know that Maya Banks wrote yummy books then I would never pick up her recently re-released Sweet series with their fruit covers. I have absolutely no desire to read a book with a freaking pear on the cover. I mean, what the heck is it supposed to represent? An adult version of Veggie Tales? A cook book? A book about the history of pears?! See? Pears don’t make me think naughty thoughts.  That’s because pears aren’t sexy. Fruit isn’t sexy. (Granted, a banana can be considered dirty if you have a really dirty mind.) If anything, seeing all the fruit makes me hungry, and instead of buying the book, I leave and go buy food.

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE? I AM SPENDING MORE MONEY ON FOOD THAN I AM ON BOOKS! PEOPLE. THIS IS WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS!!! Yeah, I know I need to eat food in order to keep living, but I also need my man-candy! How am I going to survive without any man-candy? I’m not sure it is possible. Do you hear me, publishers? YOU ARE KILLING ME! And in return, I am not buying your books. It’s a lose-lose situation here. Bring back the man-candy and I promise to spend enough money so all of you can go on vacation with plenty of fruit in Bora Bora. Deal?