Ms. Brummel's letter addressed the current trend used by many publishing companies to decapitate their heroes heads. Considering all of the novels I've read -I once read over 200 the summer before my senior year in high school -I never really thought about this. But Ms. Brummel surely did and she was particularly ticked off by what she called a publishing gimmick.
Even though I loved the heroes on everyone of Johanna Lindsey's novels back in the early 80s(I've collected all of them), which were painted by cover illustrator extraordinaire Robert Mcginnis , it really doesn't matter to me if I can see the heroes face or not.
(Covers like this ruined me to ordinary love)
A hot male model body is still a hot body with or without the body. But of course, I'm not the type of reader who makes their buying choices by the cover. In fact, I hardly notice a cover since I immediately turn the book over to read the blurb. If the blurb doesn't draw me, then the book remains on the shelf or in my case it isn't downloaded to my computer.
Ms. Brummel's desire to see the hair, eye color, and lips of the hero must have intrigued the RT magazine's editors as well because they wrote a feature story called "Decoding Book Covers" to address the issue. They interviewed Janice Rossi, artistic director for Kensington to get the down low on the creation of a romance book cover.
According to Ms. Rossi, publishers only have 3 seconds to catch the reader's interest. And supposedly there are certain non-verbal cues on every book cover that places it in a particular genre. For example in paranormals, publishers use the moon, foggy streets, or mist.
But why are publishers putting their hero's head on the virtual chopping block?
Even though I would love to spill the beans, especially since the answer is rather simple, I will have to defer to Elissa Petruzzi who did all the leg work for this article:) Romantic Times magazine can be found in most bookstores.
In the future, I hope a reader will write in and ask why the heroine's backside is always front and center.
