Ah, I see what you’re saying now. I hadn’t thought of it this way, but this is an excellent point. You’re also right in saying that I’m getting ahead of myself by speaking of a boycott; like I said in a comment on my blog, I’m being pessimistic here.

My guess is that unless a large news company runs with this story a week before the book hits stores, Justine’s not going to suffer a major loss in sales. The number of people who are too lazy to order the AUS version online or who fear they might hurt Larbalestier by not buying the U.S. version will probably chicken out and buy the Bloomsbury edition. The point is to make Bloomsbury aware that book buyers are actually literate in all forms, not just paper text, and they care about the positive representation of diversity or lack of it in books.

No doubt that the vast majority of influential people in U.S. publishing already know about this imbroglio and would associate it with any future sales numbers of Liar and react accordingly. Word travels fast.

Again, NO ONE that I know of has either advocated or started a boycott of either the author or the publisher. We’re talking about a group of people who, for personal reasons, do not wish to support this particular title from this particular publisher.

It’s really no different than someone in England saying, “I don’t like bad art on book covers, so I’m not going to buy the British edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” I knew a lot of people who did exactly that, who, for whatever reasons, hated the British versions of the books or the American versions and only bought one kind. It takes a bit longer to buy a copy, but the author is not suffering a loss of sales. I realize Rowling and Larbalestier are not in the same sales numbers range, but the principle is the same: sometimes, a large group of people decide not to support a product.

The question I think I’m trying to ask is this: Why does avoidance of a piece of art one finds offensive have to be justified in order to calm the fears of other erstwhile fans?

I think not buying a book because the cover is racist is one hell of a lot better reason than because you don’t like the cover art, but neither reason should have to be openly justified to anyone. Simply because so many people have agreed with each other online, I think others panic when they see the same negative reaction echoed over and over. But there are 300 million people in the United States alone. It surprises me that there are only hundreds of blog responses and not thousands.

But who knows? Maybe Bloomsbury will change the cover. Maybe the book will sell well in spite of/because of the controversy and I’m worrying for nothing. Maybe she’d start writing under a pen name for a fresh start with the chains. (Maybe this last one is what I need to tell myself to justify not buying the Bloomsbury Liar.)

Do I sound like a Bloomsbury apologist? I hope not. I think that, as striking as the cover is on it’s own, it most definitely does not belong on this book. I think it’s galling that Melanie Cecka tried to justify the cover of Liar by saying maybe Micah is lying about her race when the author herself says she isn’t. I think if Bloomsbury didn’t want to put a black (or mixed race) girl on the cover, they shouldn’t have put a face on the cover to begin with. I think they made the wrong decision in selecting this cover, and as long as they try to justify it and refuse to change it, they’re continuing to make bad decisions about it. And I’m really hoping my questions in the first paragraph are just me being pessimistic.