Thursday, July 31, 2008

is pink the enemy?

Over at th Guardian this week, there's a little commentary about books aimed at women are becoming increasingly homogenised, girly and bland-looking.

As a press that publishes books by women for women, Seal struggles with the pink thing, too. I've described us as the antithesis of chick lit. We're a content-driven press that doesn't do much fluff. That said, we've published pink covers, bOObs and Rock Your Stars being two stellar examples of pink (still anti-chick lit) covers we've done recently.

So why do we do it? Finding the perfect cover is a tricky business. Marketing is an imprecise science, no doubt. We put our trust in our designers, and at the point of designing a book cover, oftentimes the designer is working from a cover memo and a summary of the book and just their own design sense to go on. I'm not a fan of the chick lit genre, but I also don't think books aimed at women are increasingly homogenized, girly, and bland-looking. I spend time looking at covers because I work in publishing, and if anything I think books aimed at women (chick lit and romance aside) are getting increasingly smarter and edgier.

Seen any good covers lately that fit this bill that you'd like to share?

(via Salon.)

1 comment:

Jennette Fulda said...

I bought a book called "Girls Just Want to Have Funds" once because of the title and because it had a hot pink spine, which really stuck out in the finance section.

I believe the whole "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" color association is something that only developed in the last century.