The Dark Side of Romance Covers, Part III

The cover for Heather Massey’s steampunk romance, Dark Queen Rising

[Need to catch up? Read The Dark Side of Romance Covers, Part I and The Dark Side of Romance Covers, Part II]

All art is political—and so is all romance cover art

There’s a strong political component to romance cover art design, one that’s often related to BIPOC, disabled, and queer characters. Historically, marginalized characters in romance books from mainstream publishers have been infrequently featured on covers. Likely, racism, bigotry, ableism, and classism primarily account for this lack.

Romance book covers are art and, as they say, all art is political.

Is this why, if I want an SFR cover with, say, a badass superhero Asian female protagonist, I need to do deep-dive research into resources such as Rebekah Weatherspoon’s WOCInRomance to find self-published titles like Athena Franco’s Rush Job?

The cover for Athena Franco’s superhero sci-fi romance, Rush Job

Rush Job wasn’t marketed to me. I made a conscious decision to seek out the type of content she produced. If not for the efforts of another woman of color, I might never have discovered Athena Franco’s books.

Mainstream romance publishers have loads of money, power, and influence, so they’re making a conscious choice when they routinely reject authors of color as well as erase marginalized characters from the covers of the BIPOC-authored books they do acquire—especially Black heroes.

My impression is that Black heroes have been vastly underrepresented on romance covers in large part because of rampant publisher gatekeeping (i.e., refusing to publish more Black romances by Black authors). It’s also rumored that publishers believe covers with Black heroes don’t sell, so they found ways to avoid putting more of them on covers.

But wait! One of the said publisher’s books was adapted into a Netflix show called BRIDGERTON, a big-budget streaming series headed by renowned showrunner Shonda Rhimes. All of a sudden, a Black hero is good marketing for a romance cover.

The re-branded cover for Julia Quinn’s historical romance, The Duke & I

But, ah, many people already knew that. Good for Avon, I guess, that they’re trying to normalize it, or something?

I’ve not read Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, but I’ve heard enough to know that the hero in the book is a white man. I haven’t heard that the BRIDGERTON tie-in book was re-written to match the show, so someone can correct me if I’m wrong. If I’m not, how is this cover not an example of race-baiting? And if so, how is that effective marketing—or an ethical strategy to employ?

Avon’s choice is an unsettling interpretation of romance cover art diversity. It’s also another example of the publishing challenges that BIPOC readers and authors have faced since the genre’s inception. BIPOC authors generally don’t get the book deals, the movie adaptations, or the big advances, but a Black hero is used to market a romance with a white hero by a white author.

A white lady is confused by math

To some extent, the underrepresentation of diverse characters on romance covers is also because of a scarcity issue. Self-published marginalized creators, for example, would be happy to create more diverse covers, but even when they can afford quality stock images and cover design services, their choices are extremely limited.

But when one door closes, another often opens. Discover the creative solution to this problem in The Dark Side of Romance Covers, Part IV.