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Sending the wrong message
WARNING this is just a rant, so excuse me while I scream ARRAGHHH!!
Why do some publishers do this? Why do they completely ignore the diversity of their reading audience and also diverse writers?
Before I self-published in 2012, I was and still am a voracious reader. Yet some publishers still choose to ignore people of color and other groups whenever they advertise their authors.
Note to Montlake. Crowing about your new releases that only show white couples is an EPIC FAIL. Think of the message you’re sending, that this is the only target group you either care about or that you don’t have any books ready for release that celebrate diversity.
If either one is the case. GET ON IT, quickly. If playing with the big boys of publishing means exclusivity and not being inclusive, then I repeat, think of the message that you’re sending.
Montlake isn’t alone in doing this sort of thing, so this rant also goes for other big publishers out there who fill their front web pages and newsletters with book covers that inadvertently (or purposely) tell the reader that the only romance worth having is when the couples are of the same race, or that you can never have enough covers showing model worthy white lovers. What about Asian cover models? Or African? Or African American? Or First Nation, just to give a few examples of the under-represented.
Or bi-racial, like the President of our country?
This is 2014, not 1940. Why Montlake, did I click on your site to see a WTF wall full of this:
****I decided against posting any screen shots. This is no fault of the authors themselves, and I don’t want this rant to be viewed as such.****
Okay, I’m done. And yes, I feel a bit better now 🙂
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Too Close for Comfort
Back in October of 2013, I put up an excerpt of one of my NA novels on this site and other places around the internet. The ebook title is “Before I Let Go” and its the story of a girl who has to drop out of college due to her abusive boyfriend, and how she rekindles a romance with her childhood crush, a young Hispanic male who’s wounded while fighting in Iraq.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, but this must be a popular concept, because its already been released. By someone else. So either great minds think alike, or what the hell, I dunno.*
*ETA: Well, this just got more effed up. Seems this same author was called out before regarding plagiarism. However I need to stress it’s my understanding that a premise, or “concept” cannot be copyrighted, so I guess that’s that.
In any event, I don’t wanna dwell on this. I’m just hoping if it wasn’t a sheer coincidence aka mind hive sort of thing, the author/associates now realize that “borrowing” a premise isn’t cool, and that jumping over to the minority side to get your next new novel can still back fire big time, because the internet isn’t as large as some would like to believe. But what’s more important, is that I didn’t create a Hispanic male lead for nothing. It’s because DIVERSITY IS MY PLATFORM. And it’s not as simple as giving a character an ethnic last name, but part of his/her racial identity imho.
Here’s my original blurb:
Twenty year old Skylar Torres is back home, trying to forget a volatile college romance and hoping to reconnect with her first love, Damon Salas. Twenty three year old Damon doesn’t recall the road side bomb that ended his tour of duty in Iraq, leaving him unable to speak his thoughts as clearly as before. Struggling with his new normal, Damon’s determined to live life on his own terms, and that includes a future with Skylar. But Skylar’s dealing with a controlling ex, while questioning her decision to stay away from Damon, in order to keep them both alive.
I’m still gonna release my ebook, since I’ve got a digital trail (I entered the excerpt in the Wattpad contest last year). In addition, I believe the writing inside the other author’s book is totally different than mine, though her premise has similar elements. But I’m committed to this story, because I wrote it with two Hispanic leads in mind who were both trying to cope with issues that affect young people today.
Please click the photo if you’d like to check out BEFORE I LET GO:
