I was gonna comment smt similar, I have a lot of danmei too and they have a little orange tag near the barcode saying “17+”. It’s small, but noticeable when you flip the book around to read the blurb.
@@cozyknight1611 I also think if smut was categorised as it is , erotica , a lot more young children , like tween wouldn't end up with these books because people recognise that and parents , who are , at least they are reading would be aware and put off from giving it to Charlotte 13 and certified booktok girlie
There’s a stupidly easy way to do this. In the space right above where the barcode will be on the back cover, add a short line of small text: “18+”. There. It’s done. It takes literally 10 seconds during the book design process, publishers don’t have to spend time or money on annoying stickers, and now parents can just glance at the back cover to find out whether the book has explicit content.
i soooo agree with this and over here where im front, they already have a precision about the genre like « yound adult » or « contemporary fiction » or « manga » which i think already inform what one can expect. the addition of an age range is totally doable, not to say ‘overkill’ (for a lack of a better word in the moment) and spell it out for the person who can’t do 2+2
It's a bit hilarious how the comments keep repeating 'not liking romance back in high school as a teen because the old adult covers were so unappealing'. Like you're so close to the point yet you sped past... They're not SUPPOSED to be appealing to children, they're supposed to convey the contents 😂
What's funny is that my mom got into those kinds of books when she was a teenager because her mom read them, the dime-a-dozen mail-order paperbacks from publishers like Harlequinn. They weren't explicit but perhaps a bit steamy. But I feel like nobody learned "Never judge a book by its cover" 😂😂
Instead of stickers for 18+ books (which would be a nightmare to remove - I hate stickers on books) Why not just do what Japanese publishers do? They have an obi (帯) around the book - a sort of paper strip with extra information about the book, author, series, etc... Why not just put those on all 18+ books and have a big 18+ printed on it (can include trigger warnings as well for people who need them)? That way the cover stays clean and the fact the book is for adults is made very clear. (and if you personally don't like it you can just throw it away)
Cost. It would cost the publishers much more to print these and put them on the books, so they would probably start prioritizing books that wouldn’t need these. Thus resulting in censorship.
that would be so nice. was reading a romance expecting an explicit scene, but there wasn’t one! it just gets implied and then cuts to the next morning. I’m so used to being annoyed at those kinds of scenes in sci fi books I never expected to be disappointed there wasn’t one in a romance novel!
Having been a big fan of graphic novels, the idea of a cartoon cover sounds like fun, but they all seem to be the same art style and it just feels kind of boring. I hope at some point that becomes the evolution of the cartoon cover, experimenting with different artists and making the work feel more unique. That said, after watching your video, I can't help but love the UK covers, they're so pretty!
@@mynameisreallycool1 If I had to guess, when one art style is popular, rather than take a risk on a new style, I assume most publishers just go with what works and is a safer gamble.
@@mynameisreallycool1the lineless art style is pretty generic, and inoffensive due to being so bland. That's prob why it keeps being replicated kind of like the corporate art style but for books.
@@mynameisreallycool1 It’s publishers’ way of signalling to readers, “If you liked that other thing whose cover looked similar, you’ll probably like this too!” Getting the reader to judge the book’s content based on familiarity. Same reason movie posters for similar genres often fall under the same design, content, and colour patterns. The cover is shorthand recommendation by association.
My aunt who doesn't read was picking out icebreaker for her 11 year old daughter because she thought it would get her into sports. Luckly I was able to tell her otherwise. These publisher are definitely taking advantage of what the cartoonish covers do for their sales. Just a small 18+ warning on the book can really help avoid this.
In terms of marking the age appropriateness of a book I've really been enjoying how manga publishers have been going about it usually as a nondescript icon or simple line of text denoting the age range the story is intended for next to the barcode. It's very simple to look for but doesn't stand out any more then need be while getting the job done.
Dutch kids books often use a small and subtle [age]+ at the top of the spine to denote age range/skill level (I.e. 6+, 9+… these often denote both reading level required and also the content to some point). I think using that for 18+ books would be useful too. It’s not super obtrusive (it’s usually small, in thin letters, and in a colour that fits with the rest of the cover) and it makes it really easy to see at a glance which books are 18+ since it’s on the spine!
I honestly avoid books with real people on the cover like a plague. I think they are cringe and often don't depict characters in the book at all. There is always a buff dude with short hair on the cover. It doesn't matter if the actual dude in the book has tattoos or long hair or is a scrawny nerd with glasses, the book cover will be the same stock photo dude every time. (Same goes for women, they often don't even get the hair color right)
I’m always very particular about my book covers, because the “Of Gods and Men” series sells on unusual love interests. I’ve had antlers (The Forest God’s Favor), a single glowing blue eye each (The Star Gods’ Slave), pointed ears (The Hunt God’s Hound), and tentacles/being underwater (The Ocean God’s Oath). I even sent one cover back to request he get a pearl earring (which is a plot point).
Hi! Illustrator here. One more reason poppy cartoon covers are very popular now, (together with AI art) is that they are CHEAP to make. They take way less time than more complex or realistic illustrations, and are more friendly to corrections and changes from the publisher. Traditional illustrations in oil, acrylic or watercolor are neigh impossible to correct once they have already been painted, and require a longer planning and sketching phase. Cartoony simple covers also don't require a lot of knowledge of the book, and an artist can make them without actually reading it, with a paragraph or two of direction from the publisher.
They look so low effort, I would easily believe most of them were finished in 30 mins or less. Ali hazelwoods books even have a purposeful unfinished look to them. I love beautiful illustrations on books like the early Harry Potter books or “a dowry of blood” for example. But the tacky minimal detail cartoons are not it
the children's books from American Girl are a huge example of this - originally the illustrations to the books were gorgeous paintings, with styles usually differing between series (as they used several different artists across different characters' stories), although all done in a semi-realistic style and frequently using reference models. While the artwork hasn't completely gone away, most of the latest releases from them have an appealing yet much more cartoony style, and i would be surprised if some of them used models at all.
My local manga shop wraps any sexually explicit manga in plastic,, which can be removed after purchase but uhh, is immediately obvious to the cashier, who can ID you (source: i tried to acquire one at 14... i was so embarrassed lol, and rightly so)
This is something ive seen in every manga store ive been to (at least in europe) and i think its a great way to make sure 18+ manga arent bought by minors
Regarding the icebreaker book and the parent vetting the content; if you read the description and synopsis you really can’t see that it is full of so much R rated content, so I don’t think a parent would catch that unless they read the book themselves.
You can google whether or not its safe they are literally trying to make it someone else's problem that they don't want to make sure they are appropriate for a kid
@@alvafairchild13 this is an unfair argument. You shouldn’t have to google before every decision you need to make or every time your child picks up a book in the store, and also I’ve heard the argument that the location of the book in the store should be looked at, but these books are sold at Walmart and target and they have them mixed. I just want to be clear, I am not saying the book shouldn’t exist or that no one should be allowed to read these books, and I am definitely not saying the author shouldn’t write the books she wants, I’m say the publishing and marketing companies should be a little more mindful in clearly indicating what the book is about. It’s the same in the reverse, if I wanted to read an epic fantasy and the cover and synopsis of a book I pick up shows me it’s an epic fantasy, I’m not going to stop and google “is this an epic fantasy” and image even worse, that after I buy it and take it home I find that it’s about the history of the Cleveland, I would not be happy. I just think it should be more clear on the cover or description what to expect. If you look at Ice Planet Barbarians cover you know exactly what you are in for and I don’t hear any complaints about that book.
I agree, and I think it's a bit much to have a parent vet ever single thing their kid reads because a) as a veracious child I went through far more books then my parents could ever have feasibly kept up with, and b) it's kinda weird to have your parents be that hover-y over you by the time you're at the age most of these kids seem to be who are picking up these books. I think the parents should still be aware and in touch with their kid, and their should be open lines of communication between the two of them, but I also know there needs to be a health amount of space and trust between the two especially as the kid is growing to be more independent.
@@alvafairchild13 I'm speaking as a parent myself. If my son picked up a book that was brightly colored and cartoonish, I wouldn't think that I even have to look up its contents on Google to begin with. ESPECIALLY if he picked it up in the YA section. I feel for this parent honestly. I 10000% would've made the same mistake
I was a voracious reader. In fifth grade, I'd often go through 3-7 novels a week and by 6th grade I'd read nearly everything in the children's wing of my local library. Asking my mom to monitor my book intake would have stifled me and been a full time job, an unfair ask. I do remember the time a romance audiobook got shelved in the kids section and I checked it out because there just weren't enough audiobooks to be picky. The word "organism" didn't make sense in context, so I got out the giant dictionary and got a good definition and spelling for the new vocab word. I think I was in 5th grade, and I did not pass it to my third grade brother next. Audiobooks are different. But if a younger kid gets ahold of a book with adult themes, they might ask questions and learn a few life lessons. Or more likely most of what they don't already understand will go over their heads. I remember reading princess diaries books and every time Meg Cabot wrote "it" I just left it as an undefined blank space until halfway through the book I was like Oh... Got it. That's dumb.
It doesn't even need to be a sticker; just design it onto the cover directly so it gets printed there. Easiest solution of all. Make the numbers look fancy or pretty but easy to read and DONE. It could also or instead have Content Warning pages in the front as other people have suggested here, another easy solution that is relatively cheap, probably gets bought during licensing to other countries, and explains it thoroughly. This would make it quicker for parents to vet the book and really allow anyone to decide based on their own personal opinion of what they think is appropriate or acceptable or even just interested in. Fanfiction has tags for a reason; add tags physically this way.
I also think romance novels for a long while felt like the book your mom reads. it didn't feel "young". I was in high school during the dystopian sci-fi craze. No one was reading romance. Oh, we liked romance plots in the books (ie twilight, Cassandra Clare, etc), but no one in my high school would have willingly picked up a romance book because the cover art was still Fabio, or too realistic, and too Gen x. These cartoons as you say, make them younger, softer, and coupled with the fact that we as a society are leaning towards softer content across the board (rise of Bridgeton is a great example), it makes sense.
I feel like people are reaching for “younger” content for the lack of a better word. Our gen still likes period dramas but they must be highly modern and anachronistic in some way. Bridgerton. Dickinson. The buccaneers. My lady Jane. They all have a certain levity. The great. Harlots. Previously the most popular period dramas were those that were most authentic and covered interesting periods of history. Now those are few in number and largely on premium channels. Meanwhile people consume the modern shows but still complain. They see iPhone face, complain about non-period specific styling, and complain about plot lines.
@@hypercortical7772 haha you’re right, I skip those scenes lol. I mean, I just remember in 2019 when everything coming out was a horror movie, and every TV show had to be dark and ominous and it was super annoying
@@BatshevaDueck. I'm finding the opposite problem. you can never pick up a nice horrifying story without it being turned into a love triangle and ruined. the worst part is as soon as that happens I know it can't end without them succeeding cause that won't appeal to romance audiences so now it's predictable.
They give “corporate Memphis” which is an art style used predominately by tech companies and I find it to be a really huge turn off on book covers. I prefer a graphic illustrative book cover but the current trend in style is so lifeless and generic and just feels like corporations revealing themselves more explicitly in yet another facet of life. Like I know books are published by huge corporations but I don’t want to be explicitly and constantly reminded of that by the bland art on the book I’m reading. Books are largely escapism for me and this kind of cover does nothing to contribute to the illusion then story inside is creating.
I've been reading some "sexy" cozy fantasy lately on Kindle Unlimited and have found authors putting a "content warning" page at the start of the book which is super nice. They're often similar to what you get as content warnings from movies." This book contains sexual content, violence and death" or "this is a sweet love story with an age gap" etc. It doesn't give away any plot or spoilers but lets you know quickly if this book is something that might not be for you. I think having a page like this in books would make it easier for most people but especially parents. I don't know about everyone else but I don't go to a bookstore and look up reviews of every single book I'm interested in and I highly doubt parents have time to do this for each book their kids might want. I'm not a parent but if I was, I would hope that I could at least rely on the bookseller to properly identity age appropriate books/sections. Having a content warning page though would make it easier for everyone of all ages to identify if a book is something they might not be interested in or might not be appropriate.
I also have content warnings, right on the Amazon page. My stories touch on some taboo subject matter & I don’t want someone to have a bad experience reading my books. That said, I’ve been told I over-warn, like an animal violence warning for three sentences in a battle scene where someone spears a horse.
since u mentioned how the majority of books in stores aren't intended for children, im thinking 2 myself, couldn't we put stickers on books that ARE suitable for kids and younger teens? i understand it's never really simple, but it seems like a more efficient version of the adult content warning stickers.
Either that or proper categorizing I've heard a lot of female authors can get shoved into YA just for being female i feel like if they would consider the books not just sales they'd actually be in the proper spot
I’m here to give my opinion on what you talked about so here it goes I do thinks that cartoonish covers look good and have beautiful colors but lately I feel like every single romance that they publish looks the same. It makes me instantly be uninterested in the story because I feel that it will be the same romance story and it feels repetitive. I DO think there should be a 18+ sticker on book covers or anywhere where parents can see it’s not appropriate for kids. I also thinks that maybe they can even add the main trigger warnings of the code to a code bar at the begging of the book! As a teacher I see firsthand how reading inappropriate things can affect children specially when they are innocently interested in a book because of the back cover and end up reading things that can either traumatize them or intrigue them in a negative way! I’m all in for protecting children’s innocence 💪 And I think that using AI to do book covers is a cheap and easy solution to do a cover. I think that using IA is basically accepting that we don’t need artist’s talent to use create things. It is disrespectful to art itself I believe. Writers are artists in a way too so imagine having AI write a book for itself?!?! Then we are done as society. AI really freaks me out and the easy access and addiction for it will do unreversed damage to our children in the future. Thank so much for sharing this amazing information 🙏🏼
Thank you for this video! My beef with the trend is that many times YA covers will be gorgeous and lush, but the adult covers will be cartoons. What? As an avid romance reader, I find these simple covers to be insulting. I hope this trend will die soon.
I have thought about the cover trend quite a bit lately. I actually despise the cartoon ish covers. The drawings look so amateurish and silly, they may as well be stick figures. I can't depend on the cover to give me a glance at the characters anymore. I also am not fond of seeing portraits of real people on covers. I do kind of miss the clinch covers, they at least were more artistic and interesting. Now I have to do more research on a book before buying it, or listen to word of mouth, then I buy it in spite of the ghastly amateur cartoon drawings on the cover. The covers never make me curious about the story any more.
I think one of the reasons why many of them seem amaturish, is that there's no movement to the characters, they just look static and still. There's no flow or anything, it's wild. You can go in the children's section and grab the most cartoonish-looking graphic novel and they're typically 10x better looking because they have flow to them. Hell, I'm sure there are actual stick figures out there that look better! The covers kinda remind me of the Candy Apple books for kids. Just a bunch of the same static poses and bright colours. I'm not sure who finds them appealing other than actual children.
Honestly no matter how interesting something sounds if it has one of those ugly low effort cartoon covers I'm not buying it, even if everyone I know loved it
@@smilingstingray5537 it's a lack of drawing skills. also fast to produce. now anyone who draws a blob in photoshop with a little texture can claim to be an illustrator
I feel like, as long as adult books are properly shelved in the adult section, there’s no problem. Maybe online retailers should be required to have them sorted or tagged as adult. Also, I hate the cartoon covers as a purely subjective opinion
Jesus christ how is it that in 2024, with such a massive glut of animation for adults easily available and thriving for *decades*, people STILL see anything stylized or "cartoony" as "clearly for children." South Park has been running for nearly 30 years, The Simpsons has been around for even longer, and anime is more popular than its ever been. Ralph Bakshi's work came out nearly 60 years ago. How much longer are people going to continue to make this frankly asinine assumption?
I don't read romance (often), but one thing that I am fed up of seeing on book covers in general is boring designs. When I started reading sci fi and fantasy back in the 90's the book covers were usually beautiful pieces of artwork in their own right and they helped me to decide if I wanted to read a book or not. In the late 2010's to now, I've started to notice a trend to simpler designs and (therefore, boring) in a lot of ways and they make every book in a genre look the same. If it's a boring cover, now, most of the time I only pick it up to read if I've read the author before. AI generated images are bad, not just because of the plagiarism/stealing of art, but because if people see a complicated image they now assume that it's AI generated so that's bad for a real artist if people don't believe that they made the image themselves. However, covers have been made by computer for a long time now so a lot of the boring covers are made from vector images found in image programs like photoshop, or complied from different images edited together in image programs so that's just as bad as the AI generated images. I suspect that one of the reasons why covers have gravitated towards cartoonish images is because they are vector images and it's easier to edit them in an image program if they are simple to manipulate. If the book covers are mainly hand drawn/painted whether traditionally or digitally, then great, if not, then it's bad and will badly effect artists either way.
My library used to be super strict about taking out explicit books, they had a little red sticker on every book that was 18+ and if someone who had a children’s library card, or had an adult one but looked younger than 18 tried taking it out they would be asked for ID. I think bookshops should have a similar policy, have an indicator on the book or even just the price sticker that it’s explicit and don’t sell it to children.
I wish my library did this! I'm not fond of censorship in general (slippery slope. Where will it end?) But there are things that kids just shouldn't read until they're older. So I was shocked to find my local library shelving p*rn manga in with the children's books, simply because the staff believed all manga/comics were for kids. (Not only did I have to stop and show them the graphic/explicit content, but the very blatant 18+ warnings on the back) At the very least libraries should be aware of what they're buying based on content rather than covers or blurbs and what age range those books are suitable for.
This isn't exactly a new problem. When my parents and I would go to the book section at Walmart, there wasn't a clear distinction between YA and everything else. If the book was within my parents normal price range (less than 10 dollars) I could get it. If the back of the book seemed innocuous enough, I could get it. My parents were older and both working. A bunch of senior girls were talking about 50 shades when I was 14 and a freshman. I got it, my parents bought it for me. They had no idea. I HAD NO IDEA. I wanted to read any and everything and if it was a popular book, I picked it up. I cannot imagine what I'd be picking up today as a kid who wanted to read anything and everything. As for more cartoonish covers, I really really don't like the "people on the cover" trend unless it is true historical fiction. I saw someone else comment that the "bodice rippers" were books for bored and lonely housewives. People knew what you were reading. Now its a little more quiet. I do agree that there needs to be better separation between what is acceptable for certain age brackets and I feel like that needs to go somewhere on the book. Sort of like how there's a "recommended age" on kids books, why do they stop that? they can put "18+" and the reason I feel like that is viable and not censorship is because of 1. your example of music having an E on it, and 2. movies and shows having a rating system. I feel like it's not super slippery if we get a set rating system like with music and other media.
When I was young, books would always have an age rating in with the publication info at the front of the book. Although I found they were more for reading level and not based on content.
I feel that some cartoon covers (like red, white and royal blue or check&mate) look good from afar BUT if you look them closer the characters faces look so bad I need them to look good from all perspectives it’s frustrating
I can't speak for ice breaker, I can't check cause it's in storage but wildfire does have an 18+ thing on the back at least australia version does any way, it's tiny but it's there lol so that's pretty cool and other publishers could do that
I spent most of my budget on my cover and design when I was working on putting out my debut. It paid off so well too! I got my dream cover, my book was way more successful than I expected it to be because people ate up that cover! It’s one of the reasons I chose to do indie, I like the control of doing what I want and representing my books how I see them. And people tell me it’s the prettiest book on their shelf all the time, even over their special editions! So I consider that a huge win. And no cartoons necessary 🤣 though mine is fantasy romance so thankfully it hasn’t fully cartooned up yet, mostly it’s just the same composition shot every time with a variation of skulls and roses and daggers
Simple explanation: Type is arranged in a rectangular frame and clamped in place. Then it's placed on a flat bed in the press. The moving frame (not the actual name, but a decent description) is pulled back over it as ink rollers press ink onto the type. The impression cylinder, a large padded cylinder, grabs a sheet of paper from the feed end, then rolls it over the type as the moving frame is pulled back to the other end where the paper is removed and the ink cylinders pick up fresh ink for the type. I started out in hot metal type setting in the 1980s and went on to run the presses. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea. Platen presses are simpler and use a flat padded platen plate to hold the paper and press it to the type. They're smaller and make it easier to control different impression pressures across the type. Better for die cutting.
this book cover art style is why i thought red, white, & royal blue was a silly cute (straight?) romance, and why i was super duper shocked when i turned on the movie and it was the opposite! why would you want to advertise your product so poorly :')
i totally understand why you wouldn’t expect the smut but im a bit surprised that you didn’t realise it was a gay romance? the cover has two men on it & the synopsis says it’s about a romance between the son of the president & the prince of england.
I don’t know if they just weren’t your preferred genre or if you’re just young but these kinds of cartoon covers were the norm for a very large swathe of cozy mysteries and new adult romances in the late 2000s and 2010s. From Meg Cabot romances to Katie MacAllister paranormal romance to murder mysteries like How to Murder and Millionaire these covers were everywhere.
I may be old fashioned, but I want the cover to give me a sense of the book. Avant guard or generic cartoon often have nothing to do with the story inside. As I am scrolling through a bookstore, my first impression is the cover. If it has nothing to do with the description of the book, it leaves me frustrated--excitement followed by letdown. I prefer photo-realistic covers tied to the story. As a self-published author, one of the most enjoyable parts of the publishing process is working with a graphic artist to come up with the cover. It is a back-and-forth eventual meeting of the minds. You are normally given a few options and a set number of suggestions/corrections (depending on how much you pay for your cover package). The cover of my first novel, for example, started off as a cartoon cover but after several swings and misses, I found a second cover designer who was willing to work with my vision of giving the reader a good sense of what the book was about, a cold case centered around an old photograph of something unbelievable. In the end, the cover looked something like the old, scratchy photograph I described in the novel, sufficiently eerie. Several readers have commented that the only reason they read the book was because of the cover.
Here’s the thing about special editions: Most of them come in a subscription box where you don’t get a say in which ones you get. You can hope for a specific book, but there is no guarantee. So yes. You do end up with a bunch of special editions of books that you have never read, but on the plus side, even if it turns out a book is not to your taste, you can always sell it and get your money back. It is a lot easier to get what the book is worth when it is a special edition.
WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE. but the issue of children getting ahold of explicit books is still an issue. so why not fix it? not by getting rid of cartoon adult covers, but by other means. clear disclaimers. sheaths or stickers or stamps on the back. so parents can be included in + aware of their child's activities, which is a parent's responsibility.
I'm with people saying that it should be more common to have a page dedicated to trigger warnings. Maybe at the end of the book? So those who want can go in blind and people who do have some triggers they _very much_ want to avoid can go look, and so parents can get a quick overview. As for the 18+ warning, maybe have it be integrated in a subtle way on the back cover? If you're looking for it, you can see it. If you don't care, it's not glaring loudly at you and you can't be embarrassed by it because it's not advertising itself to the world loudly. I don't mind cartoon covers on books that aren't explicit/have very adult themes. Some books really are suitable for everyone from teenagers to older readers and I think those can be very good with cartoon covers. Because even if they're considered adult books, as they follow older characters, they won't be harmful to younger readers. I just finished reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and I think it falls into that. The two main (human) characters are 70 and 30 years old. They both have adult problems, but really they're human problems. The book touches on grief, but I think it's a good read at practically any age. I would have been disappointed there wasn't any fantasy in it if I read it at 13, but I think it still would have gone over well. The book has a cartoon cover that makes it feel very youthful, but the contents feel ageless in a way. What I find interesting is that the "cartoon" stylized covers are almost all lineless. Though it makes sense, since things with outlines don't come out as well when shrunk into tiny thumbnails on tiny screens. I wonder if we'll see a trend drifting those towards other art styles in the future.
I worked at a bookshop for almost a year and Romanian publishing houses do tend to put +17/+18 marks on books, but they’re always at the back, near the barcode, and most people don’t even see them. There are also collections named “Midnight Books” that only publish romances with mature content. But preteens or young teens will see a cartoonish cover and run with it, and parents don’t check for age restrictions. A mum wanted to buy Ugly Love for her fourteen year old daughter and I told her I don’t think the book is suited for her, but she insisted on buying it anyway. I wish I could have turned down customers like these, but the shop wasn’t selling enough as it was, so yeah
It's the first time i stumble upon your videos and I was expecting a bigger enphasis on your personal opinion and the problems the cartoonification of book covers might entail, but I really enjoyed how you brought up the history of book covers, -i'm really interested in how art happens in history and how it affects our interaction with the world, very well researched! As for the problem of editorials advertising teen books the same way they advertise adult books, spice or not, tbh i think it's way simpler than a lot of people might think. After all, shows, movies and videogames have had content warnings for as long as i remember, physycal copies often include a series of symbols that indicate mature content such as violence, profanity, sex and drug use, and platforms like netflix and disney+ give warnings on the corner of the screen about potentially inappropriate content, including tobacco usage! I dont tjhink it's wild to ask editorials and even impose a mandatory set of symbols onto potentially inapropriate books, as well as age ratings. It's reasonable to ask for parents to monitor what their kids consume, but not to expect them to read every book their kids choose, or reasearch every review (specially if a book is new or not that well known). A set of symbols like this not only warns that a read might be explicit, but also filters any sort of content that could be inappropriate, you might be willing to let your teenager read about nudity or violence, but not explicit sex or drugs. And it doesn't even have to disturb the design, it can be adapted to whatever style the book is aiming for and placed on the back, that way when you read the synopsis you also get a warning of what you or your kid might get into while reading it.
obvs this is a whole different can of worms, but the issue of covers following the author's wishes and also potentially being misleading immediately made me think of lolita (ofc the content of the novel itself is controversial and often misinterpreted) but vladimir nabokov didn't want it to be published with any kind of girl on the cover because he knew it'd look like a romance, meanwhile it's like impossible to find a version of the book, whether us or internationally published, that doesn't have a girl on it or at least refer to the heart-shaped sunglasses in the 60s movie adaptation, which isn't even in the book iirc. total tangent, but this was a great video!!
As a young child of 90s I remember seeing those Romance books every time I went to the story with my mom and thinking, “why is it the same guy on all these books that mommy says are trash and we don’t read???” I was very confused and also wonder why his shirt was always undone🤨
Why mark the Adult books at all? Mark the Kids & YA books as "E" for Everyone, and then parents only have to look for the "E" that they should be used to looking for in Movies and Video Games.
i loved the history! it think it really added a lot and made me appreciate how much i not only take books being accessible for granted, but also how new visual design for mass-marketing purposes is in the grand scheme of human culture. i think we have a lot left to learn, but as far as the cartoon covers, i don't think adults would have been comfortable identifying with the cute vibes of cartoon covers a decade ago, and i'm going to favorably interpret that as we're culturally getting more open with the warm fuzzy feelings that mammals like us crave🥰 and your editing was candy as always! 🍬🍭 p.s. i still love that top!✨
I accidentally found the person that does many of these covers on etsy. The three feet apart not actually interacting ones. They undercharge. A LOT. Like 50$ a cover. The editors are just being cheap. There's also AI there and book cover websites that are getting overwhelmed with AI instead of their usual photobashes or 3d renders. Others are comic book artists/Illustrators who can at least add character to the cover like the Ali Hazelwood ones. It hurts because I am a comic artist and I like the "cartoon" style if they're actually illustrative of the book and not just standing around. If we can't have the lusty paintings of the 80s then I don't want the boring flowers and horses that came after that. An 18+ indication is nice but Barnes and Noble already has an indication of what books are for kids: They have their own section that is literally walled off in most of the stores I've been in. If it's not in the kids section it's not for kids. There's been some more painterly covers popping up in monster romance and those are great. Like new Ruby Dixon and Katee Robert, but that genre is also rife with AI.
I am amazed by the work that went into this video!! The research, the pacing, the intonation, and that editing!!! All of it is so good! I really appreciate it
Adult content can include adult themes like mourning death or racism, or graphic violence. Or it might have one scene vs. the whole book. It is not the same as Erotica, so the 18+ sticker would be misleading when they're eventually treated the same as Erotica. I think we should just be better consumers (especially parents. It takes 30 secs to vet the book (especially if you're BUYING it). Doing our research before purchasing doesn't stop with food and safety. And yes. It's going to stigmatize romance further, particularly LGBTQ+ romance.
I see this as an extension of people having trouble making the shift from YA to adult books. And then they keep reading YA books but criticize them for being immature. I do like when I can identify the genre and tone of a book from the cover, and it's frustrating when it communicates the wrong thing. It's like biting into what you think is a chocolate chip cookie and getting raisins. I like raisins fine, but not when I'm expecting chocolate. Right now, this cartoonish style does effectively communicate "contemporary romance"...to people who know the convention. But man, does it infantilize the genre.
Came for the bashing of lazy covers, stayed for the history lesson. Also, as an American, I don’t have a lot of trust in the big-brand marketing teams. It eels like they never actually understand the people they’re marketing to. (I also think it’s silly to not want characters shown on the cover, especially if the characters are described in-story. It becomes a problem when the cover characters don’t match the book descriptions, though.)
Personal opinion, I prefer to read clean romance books and I usually see the cartoon covers, which to me look sweet and innocent, only to find out that they have content I don’t prefer to read. I’d love it if there could be a spice meter of some kind on the first page of the book. Then everyone could decide for themselves and the marking wouldn’t be on the outside of the cover so no one would feel judged .
Hot key books (teen book publisher in the UK) actually does something like this. They have keywords near the barcode. Adding an age recommendation like with manga is a good idea, but adding key words or pictograms (like the Dutch kijkwijzer and even libraries do) is a good plan. I've seen books in libraries here that have they symbol for explicit violence or sex on them and I've seen them in stores too, but not very many times. I think the pictograms are smart. You can make them universal everywhere and a store/library can just hang a list in a visible place. Putting it on the spine (in a library) or next to the barcode (in a store) makes very innocuous to check as the barcode shows the price as well and many books also have a synopsis on the back. It would be great to see this more..
28:30 The only problem I have with special editions Is that They are becoming the standard edition. Here in Italy we have got a publishing house (Mondadori) which at first releases the hard cover version of a book, with the beautiful art inside . They are Amazing , but they cost 25 euros. To buy the standard paperback you have to wait a year or more, and cause of this I cant read some of the books i'm interested in right after they come out.
Im sorry.... but im not putting my minimalist cartoon books up for display XD thats on par with putting my DVD of 6teen on the mantel XD Im not saying they arent well produced book covers and pieces of art work. But the books I display are the unique ones, the ones that show craftmanship, ones with intricate deisgns, and ones that had stories that really resonated with me. I think that last one applies to a lot of us. (Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinion and expression for what they display, im not trying to make anyone feel bad. You do you, boo)
Also, I found Ice Breaker at target, and it was surrounded by 6 other hockey smut-romance books. All at chest level or lower. I 100% would have grabbed that book at like 13. A lot of SUPER reader kids have parents who literally can't keep up with checking what their kids read. Some parents don't care, some just don't realize that they can't trust book shops to properly organize adult content from youth content. If naming my vape "Unicorn Snot" is marketing to kids, then putting cartoons on smut is marketing to kids. (Not against smut, just against smut for kids.)
i think the “new adult” concept is a great one; if bookstores and libraries had a separate section from YA/teen for this genre like the do Adult, i feel like the problem would be solved. and then there isn’t any fighting about what constitutes 18+ or what is actually explicit. if it has new adults in it, it’s new adult! it would probably still cause some disagreements, but i think it’s the best possible solution🤷🏼♀️ also you are so well spoken! such a great video🫶🏻
I think teen books in the UK used to have age recommendations (ie my local library having teen, and teen+ stickers) above their barcodes, but I don't know if they still do. It's been a long while since I looked at children and young adult books. I do think having the 18+ on them, maybe not as a sticker, but above the barcode on the back would be beneficial. Since then a customer is looking at the blurb, then the price of the book and can see the 18+ on it.
I want to see more traditional art on covers. I like digital art but I really think we should get more traditional covers, they just always work so well
Haha. You hate it but I ordered the Lady MacBeth hardcover specifically because I love the cover art. I love that her gaze is penetrating with one eye while the other eye is mysteriously veiled. It totally fits what the novel is about and I thought it would make good reading for the approaching spooky season.
This was such a well made video, I love your editing! I don't have anything against special editions usually, but it didn't sit well with me when the latest special editions of Sarah J Maas books had different bonus chapters you could only get in certain special editions, encouraging people to buy multiple copies of the same books.
It’s interesting living in Canada, because it’s a toss up whether we get the American edition or UK edition. I feel like when I was a kid it was much more likely we would have the UK edition and now it is more likely to find the American.
If there’s a couple kissing on the cover then it’s a romance book, wether the people on the cover look. like cartoons or not. If ur child asks to read a book you’re either going to have to buy it yourself, which means your going to have to be the one buying it and that means you can read the back cover and know what the book is actually about. Or they’re going to get it from a library, which means the librarian should be the one curating books to make sure they’re age appropriate.
Libraries are not generally staffed well enough to police what people read, even if it were ethical according to the American Library Association. That's why parents exist. Do I redirect people when they are looking for something in the wrong section? Yes. Do I wince when young people pick books that are graphic? Yes. But unless a parent or guardian specifically prohibits, our responsibility is to the reader.
@@emiliapawny4746 I despise this argument so much. you are not required to have a device connected to the internet on your person at all times. Would we accept this argument for things such as, let's say, television programmes? "Why would we have an age rating before a broadcast, just google it." Putting more and more burden on the consumer means that corpos get away with more and more. It is not about good parenting. It is about duty of care which is not given because it would limit and scandalise the audience and this reduce sales.
So I don't necessarily see the issue with giving a rating or content warning for books that have suggestive or explicit material. I don't necessarily see it as censorship as informative labeling to let the reader know what is in it. This could not only help prevent explicit content from getting into the hands of children but it would also allow readers determine if that is the kind of book they want to read. Also, we do this for movies so why shouldn't we do this for books as well?
As an American I absolutely love UK covers. Specifically for certain fantasy series. Like Brandon Sanderson novels in the US are gaudy and terrible looking. But the Gollancz covers are simple and beautiful. So I’ll pay for the shipping and wait a really long time to import them.
If nothing else, i think that a little "18+" should be printed on the book. Similar to how manga is printed. We cant fully control kids accessing this media unfortuntaly(heck i was reading fan fiction well before i should have been), but by printing age limits on books, maybe we can help the parents that dont have unlimited time to screen everything their children partake in. Like you said, there is only so much time in a day.
The removable printing method was popularized in China since its conception around 1040: The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990-1051).
I like the sticker idea, I think they should use the similar grading as movies - PG, PG 13, PG 16, R Usually PG13 & 16 have profanity and R are explicit content and constant swear words. More and more books are not including trigger warnings for mentioning certain themes so it shouldn't be too much of a leap to do an age rating too.
One thing we see with the book bans and such is classifying any queer content as “adult” which could be a problem with any mandated 18+ note as well. But, in general, it would be nice to have some indication of the content and this feels like a failure of marketing. You’d think it would be a good thing for readers to be able to find the right “spice level”, as it were. And bookstores aren’t libraries, but they often have passionate employees who enjoy finding the right book for the right person, but it seems they aren’t getting the right cues from the publishers.
Hey there. About content warnings. In my country the sign 18+ is printed on the cover as part of the design. It doesn't matter what genre the book belongs too. For example, I have a literary fiction book about WWI and it is 18+. When you go directly to the store and see that a book is wrapped in plastic, it's s definitely R rated. I remember I had to show my ID a couple of times to purchase some books like that.
I think when it comes to the age rating of a book, it it something that could be easily done without harming the publishing company(sales-wise). When it comes to video games there's always a rating attributed to it regarding the content of the game. For instance, two games could be rated M(Mature), but have completely different things that labeled them as such. If regulations exist for games and movies, i believed books should have some sort of official rating placed either on the side or the back.
The line between adult fiction and YA fiction is kinda blurry, but a lot of YA fiction has profanity and sexually explicit content as well. However, the kind of sexually explicit content may be different in YA books. It might not be as graphic as adult fiction. But, I do agree with the comments talking suggesting the age recommendation by the barcode like manga does.
23:00 Honestly, I can totally understand a parent failing to properly vet a book, especially if their kid is a big reader. It's the fact that most of the novels shown so far are all in my local library's YA section. They need to be SO FUCKING CAREFUL when labeling these books and they just aren't and it drives me up the wall. Plus, they have a ridiculous "Teen" label that shares shelves with the YA fiction that is a mix of just YA, that New Adult Fiction mentioned in the video, and a couple of instances of straight p*rn (a slight exaggeration, but only slight). As a middle schooler, I would check out stacks of books from the Teen and YA section, my parent's thinking it was completely fine because these books were supposedly for my age range, and then I'd be reading very explicit sex scenes in the middle of class (not that I'm personally mad about that, but it seems immoral on a level). I love my local library, but they really need to be better in this sense.
I kind of think it’s silly for people to think that teens don’t know beforehand that a book like icebreaker has r rated content in it. They probably heard about it from their friends or saw it on TikTok, and I think that it’s honestly a normal thing for teens to be drawn to that. Teens are deeply curious about sexual themes and often sexually active whether their parents know about it or not. I think that a lot of the discussion around these books has a lot of “adults clutching their pearls” flavor to it. As a teen I read all kinds of books, many with adult content, some with problematic themes, and it would have just been weird and oppressive for my parents to have been motoring what I was reading? I didn’t just read ya or things aimed at me as a teen. I think it’s actually better for a teen to be introduced to some adult content through a book than through porn. Even if the book has issues. I think it also doesn’t make sense to think that the cover of a book should reflect the “spiciness” of a book. Also, if I pick up a book and it has more smut in it than I was expecting or want (I’m more of a fan of fade to black and find smut cringe usually at this point), it’s actually okay? It’s actually easier for me to skip over smut in a book than it is for me to skip over a graphic sex scene in a show or movie. But those are just some of my thoughts.
I recently strolled through the Target book sections and did see almost all the adult novels mentioned in this video in the YA section. Now I am not here to judge, my parents were fine with me consuming risky media at a young age and I think I turned out fine, but it was something I did notice.
I actually will add an additional two cents...I am a little exhausted of the American censorship. There has always been a puritan culture in this country that wants to hide sex and tragedy (especially from children), and now more than ever with multiple states trying to ban books in schools. We do not need 18+ stickers on books, the music industry had to start because of the Satanic Panic in the 80s, and movies use to be policed by The National Board of Censorship which were backed by Protestants in the early 1900s followed by many other censorship groups. I am in favor of parents checking the books of their children if they have concerns, but it does not need to be pushed onto everyone else.
Honestly, I would love it if people just remembered who YA is for T-T I swear I have heard people things it's for young adults and not teens. I honestly personally don't like how saturated the Romance genre is with... You know... Woohooing as the sims might say. Like when I read a romance novel I am here to the banter and stuff and the kiss :3 Like because of this I am worried about reading modern romances ;-; Most modern I have gotten was a book published in 2013 written by my favorite author! (The book is Outcast by Adrienne Kress! Highly suggest it :333)
i feel like it’s a little silly to have to mark every single book for sale on if it’s 18+ or not because some parents can’t do a little cursory research to know what they’re kid is reading. if they don’t want their kids to read stuff that’s too mature for them, that’s perfectly understandable, but it should then be on the parents to keep track of that. it’s another situation where parents blame the world for not parenting their kid because they refuse to do it themselves.
Regarding special editions: it's kind of a non-issue because people can be consumerist about literally anything. The only thing that kind of upsets me is that most books with special editions are extremely generic, sometimes even terrible but popular books with beautiful art but garbage, Tumblr character x y/n tag worthy content. I wish I could get a special edition of a Shakespeare's plays collection or Agatha Christie or even a non fiction book. But the only classics that get special editions are those that are popular with teens like Dracula or Dune (except for religious texts like quran or bible - those get really beautiful editions too) . There are classics with gorgeous covers but they are plain as any other edition inside
personally I love special editions for books that are considered classics, especially if they are designed to emulate the look of old books another thing I feel should be important is correct categorization of books inside individual bookstores, the amount of times I went to the fantasy section, found a book with interesting name, cover, premise on the back... just to open it and find out it's actually a YA romance first and fantasy adventure that it promises... maybe second. if. it makes everyone's life easier when you categorize the books correctly so that you know a child isn't likely to pick up a saucy book when browsing the shelves, because you can see what shelf it is actually from and what titles surround it. but also, I avoid the clipart style covers myself for one because they tend to be used in a genre I don't particularly enjoy and for two I often just don't like how they look. and if I want to buy a book I'd prefer enjoying how it looks on the shelf as well as the contents but also, no way, THAT'S why all the bodice ripper novels have the same looking dude on them?! because IT IS THE SAME DUDE!!?
As a librarian I really hate these covers! It's onlt because they look exactly like the YA/J fiction so I'm always scared a teen is gonna read something they don't want to or feel uncomfortable about 😭 It's a nightmare and I wish they would go back to covers without the cartoony art :/
I mean, we have age ratings on film and tv, on video games, explicit warnings on music, and none of those industries have collapsed. I don’t see a big issue with having age ratings for books.
I do wish there was some sort of warning that could be placed on the inside of the dust jacket or something like that for 18+ romances. partially because I want to be sure *I* know what I'm getting into! I know in this day and age most people shop at bookstores with their phone on hand, but sometimes I like to immerse myself into the feeling of the bookstore and not get influenced by reviews, so some kind of visual tell would be nice.
I personally like the cartoon covers.... Especially compared to shirtless men etc.. From my knowledge, most of the barcodes have the age range on the back, like adult, young adult, etc... And anything but more stickers plz
i think there should be age recommendations written on book somewhere. i know many manga have them, many comic books will have a symbol if they're 18+, and i've seen a very small handful of young adult novels with something like "for 15+" or "for young readers" written on them. i also think that booksellers should be diligent in what's shelved in young adult vs adult. it's one thing if a teenager deliberately purchases something from the adult section and it happens to have smut, that's on them, but there's a difference between that and smut books being directly marketed to teens. i also think that people who want to foist 100% responsibility on the parents are off the mark. not only because there should be some responsibility on the publisher and the bookseller for how they're choosing to market a certain book, but also because encouraging parents to control everything their children read can be really harmful. something something book bans something something. personally, when i was in middle school, my own mother checked over everything i wanted to get from the bookstore before she would buy it for me, and the only real thing that led to was her preventing me from reading books with queer characters. as i entered high school it was more common that i would be given cash when i went out with friends and so i could buy what i wanted without her checking me, and now obviously she has no control over what i read, but for a while i could only queer books, even books aimed at my age or younger, from the library, where she wouldn't check what i checked out (and that's only if they even had them at the library)!
I read all of my special editions. I just love that I can love a story and a pretty book. 😄 Also, I never really thought about the influence of cartoon art on children and I thought that you made excellent points. A lot of romance books are putting trigger warnings in the first few pages of a book which is, in a way, a content warning. I think that an age sticker would bother a lot of people (I don't like any stickers on my books if I can avoid them). I'm the kind of person that doesn't want the book story employee even asking if I need help finding something, lol 😂 I just saw a teenage boy run from his mom and the bookstore employee because his mom was asking on his behalf. Totally embarrassed, poor kid.
Thank you for your detailed research and presentation of this topic. Honestly, I did notice the trend, and I enjoy it. I would never buy a book with a Fabio cover. The cartoon covers have convinced me to expand my reading into the romance genre, which I never would have done during previous eras. Thanks to the trend, I have found new authors and new books I love that I never would have even considered if they had traditional romance covers.
I don’t mind the cartoon covers, I just hate when they’re ugly. If the book cover hinges on the cartoon characters at least make them look detailed and appealing.
Manga's tend to have an age recomendations near their barcode. They're not always the most visable, but the option is still better than nothing
I mean when teens can buy haunting Adeline its time to do something
Was gonna say the same thing in regards to manga. Just put a small explicit content warning on the damn thing and the problem's solved. 🤷🏻♀️
I was gonna comment smt similar, I have a lot of danmei too and they have a little orange tag near the barcode saying “17+”. It’s small, but noticeable when you flip the book around to read the blurb.
@@cozyknight1611 I also think if smut was categorised as it is , erotica , a lot more young children , like tween wouldn't end up with these books because people recognise that and parents , who are , at least they are reading would be aware and put off from giving it to Charlotte 13 and certified booktok girlie
Explicitly sexual mangas also are usually wrapped in plastic so it’s very easy to tell they are mature as well.
There’s a stupidly easy way to do this. In the space right above where the barcode will be on the back cover, add a short line of small text: “18+”. There. It’s done. It takes literally 10 seconds during the book design process, publishers don’t have to spend time or money on annoying stickers, and now parents can just glance at the back cover to find out whether the book has explicit content.
i soooo agree with this and over here where im front, they already have a precision about the genre like « yound adult » or « contemporary fiction » or « manga » which i think already inform what one can expect. the addition of an age range is totally doable, not to say ‘overkill’ (for a lack of a better word in the moment) and spell it out for the person who can’t do 2+2
OMG yesss you're right! i can't believe they didn't think of this!
It's a bit hilarious how the comments keep repeating 'not liking romance back in high school as a teen because the old adult covers were so unappealing'. Like you're so close to the point yet you sped past... They're not SUPPOSED to be appealing to children, they're supposed to convey the contents 😂
😂😂
What's funny is that my mom got into those kinds of books when she was a teenager because her mom read them, the dime-a-dozen mail-order paperbacks from publishers like Harlequinn. They weren't explicit but perhaps a bit steamy. But I feel like nobody learned "Never judge a book by its cover" 😂😂
Instead of stickers for 18+ books (which would be a nightmare to remove - I hate stickers on books) Why not just do what Japanese publishers do? They have an obi (帯) around the book - a sort of paper strip with extra information about the book, author, series, etc... Why not just put those on all 18+ books and have a big 18+ printed on it (can include trigger warnings as well for people who need them)? That way the cover stays clean and the fact the book is for adults is made very clear. (and if you personally don't like it you can just throw it away)
Right some even in the bookstore they are wrapped in plastic
Cost. It would cost the publishers much more to print these and put them on the books, so they would probably start prioritizing books that wouldn’t need these. Thus resulting in censorship.
TRUE
Yeah let's pander to the idiots who can't handle things by putting trigger warning labels on there. The mentally pathetic need it. 😂
that would be so nice. was reading a romance expecting an explicit scene, but there wasn’t one! it just gets implied and then cuts to the next morning. I’m so used to being annoyed at those kinds of scenes in sci fi books I never expected to be disappointed there wasn’t one in a romance novel!
Having been a big fan of graphic novels, the idea of a cartoon cover sounds like fun, but they all seem to be the same art style and it just feels kind of boring. I hope at some point that becomes the evolution of the cartoon cover, experimenting with different artists and making the work feel more unique. That said, after watching your video, I can't help but love the UK covers, they're so pretty!
Exactly. It feels like these books are from the same author. Why are the art styles so similar to each other?
@@mynameisreallycool1 If I had to guess, when one art style is popular, rather than take a risk on a new style, I assume most publishers just go with what works and is a safer gamble.
@@mynameisreallycool1the lineless art style is pretty generic, and inoffensive due to being so bland. That's prob why it keeps being replicated kind of like the corporate art style but for books.
@@mynameisreallycool1 It's also probably cheap to design and easy to print since it's not that detailed.
@@mynameisreallycool1 It’s publishers’ way of signalling to readers, “If you liked that other thing whose cover looked similar, you’ll probably like this too!” Getting the reader to judge the book’s content based on familiarity. Same reason movie posters for similar genres often fall under the same design, content, and colour patterns. The cover is shorthand recommendation by association.
My aunt who doesn't read was picking out icebreaker for her 11 year old daughter because she thought it would get her into sports. Luckly I was able to tell her otherwise. These publisher are definitely taking advantage of what the cartoonish covers do for their sales. Just a small 18+ warning on the book can really help avoid this.
In terms of marking the age appropriateness of a book I've really been enjoying how manga publishers have been going about it usually as a nondescript icon or simple line of text denoting the age range the story is intended for next to the barcode. It's very simple to look for but doesn't stand out any more then need be while getting the job done.
Dutch kids books often use a small and subtle [age]+ at the top of the spine to denote age range/skill level (I.e. 6+, 9+… these often denote both reading level required and also the content to some point). I think using that for 18+ books would be useful too. It’s not super obtrusive (it’s usually small, in thin letters, and in a colour that fits with the rest of the cover) and it makes it really easy to see at a glance which books are 18+ since it’s on the spine!
I honestly avoid books with real people on the cover like a plague. I think they are cringe and often don't depict characters in the book at all. There is always a buff dude with short hair on the cover. It doesn't matter if the actual dude in the book has tattoos or long hair or is a scrawny nerd with glasses, the book cover will be the same stock photo dude every time. (Same goes for women, they often don't even get the hair color right)
I’m always very particular about my book covers, because the “Of Gods and Men” series sells on unusual love interests. I’ve had antlers (The Forest God’s Favor), a single glowing blue eye each (The Star Gods’ Slave), pointed ears (The Hunt God’s Hound), and tentacles/being underwater (The Ocean God’s Oath). I even sent one cover back to request he get a pearl earring (which is a plot point).
Hi! Illustrator here. One more reason poppy cartoon covers are very popular now, (together with AI art) is that they are CHEAP to make. They take way less time than more complex or realistic illustrations, and are more friendly to corrections and changes from the publisher. Traditional illustrations in oil, acrylic or watercolor are neigh impossible to correct once they have already been painted, and require a longer planning and sketching phase. Cartoony simple covers also don't require a lot of knowledge of the book, and an artist can make them without actually reading it, with a paragraph or two of direction from the publisher.
They look so low effort, I would easily believe most of them were finished in 30 mins or less. Ali hazelwoods books even have a purposeful unfinished look to them. I love beautiful illustrations on books like the early Harry Potter books or “a dowry of blood” for example. But the tacky minimal detail cartoons are not it
the children's books from American Girl are a huge example of this - originally the illustrations to the books were gorgeous paintings, with styles usually differing between series (as they used several different artists across different characters' stories), although all done in a semi-realistic style and frequently using reference models. While the artwork hasn't completely gone away, most of the latest releases from them have an appealing yet much more cartoony style, and i would be surprised if some of them used models at all.
My local manga shop wraps any sexually explicit manga in plastic,, which can be removed after purchase but uhh, is immediately obvious to the cashier, who can ID you (source: i tried to acquire one at 14... i was so embarrassed lol, and rightly so)
This is something ive seen in every manga store ive been to (at least in europe) and i think its a great way to make sure 18+ manga arent bought by minors
Regarding the icebreaker book and the parent vetting the content; if you read the description and synopsis you really can’t see that it is full of so much R rated content, so I don’t think a parent would catch that unless they read the book themselves.
You can google whether or not its safe they are literally trying to make it someone else's problem that they don't want to make sure they are appropriate for a kid
@@alvafairchild13 this is an unfair argument. You shouldn’t have to google before every decision you need to make or every time your child picks up a book in the store, and also I’ve heard the argument that the location of the book in the store should be looked at, but these books are sold at Walmart and target and they have them mixed. I just want to be clear, I am not saying the book shouldn’t exist or that no one should be allowed to read these books, and I am definitely not saying the author shouldn’t write the books she wants, I’m say the publishing and marketing companies should be a little more mindful in clearly indicating what the book is about. It’s the same in the reverse, if I wanted to read an epic fantasy and the cover and synopsis of a book I pick up shows me it’s an epic fantasy, I’m not going to stop and google “is this an epic fantasy” and image even worse, that after I buy it and take it home I find that it’s about the history of the Cleveland, I would not be happy. I just think it should be more clear on the cover or description what to expect. If you look at Ice Planet Barbarians cover you know exactly what you are in for and I don’t hear any complaints about that book.
I agree, and I think it's a bit much to have a parent vet ever single thing their kid reads because a) as a veracious child I went through far more books then my parents could ever have feasibly kept up with, and b) it's kinda weird to have your parents be that hover-y over you by the time you're at the age most of these kids seem to be who are picking up these books. I think the parents should still be aware and in touch with their kid, and their should be open lines of communication between the two of them, but I also know there needs to be a health amount of space and trust between the two especially as the kid is growing to be more independent.
@@alvafairchild13 I'm speaking as a parent myself. If my son picked up a book that was brightly colored and cartoonish, I wouldn't think that I even have to look up its contents on Google to begin with. ESPECIALLY if he picked it up in the YA section. I feel for this parent honestly. I 10000% would've made the same mistake
I was a voracious reader. In fifth grade, I'd often go through 3-7 novels a week and by 6th grade I'd read nearly everything in the children's wing of my local library. Asking my mom to monitor my book intake would have stifled me and been a full time job, an unfair ask. I do remember the time a romance audiobook got shelved in the kids section and I checked it out because there just weren't enough audiobooks to be picky. The word "organism" didn't make sense in context, so I got out the giant dictionary and got a good definition and spelling for the new vocab word. I think I was in 5th grade, and I did not pass it to my third grade brother next.
Audiobooks are different. But if a younger kid gets ahold of a book with adult themes, they might ask questions and learn a few life lessons. Or more likely most of what they don't already understand will go over their heads. I remember reading princess diaries books and every time Meg Cabot wrote "it" I just left it as an undefined blank space until halfway through the book I was like Oh... Got it. That's dumb.
It doesn't even need to be a sticker; just design it onto the cover directly so it gets printed there. Easiest solution of all. Make the numbers look fancy or pretty but easy to read and DONE. It could also or instead have Content Warning pages in the front as other people have suggested here, another easy solution that is relatively cheap, probably gets bought during licensing to other countries, and explains it thoroughly. This would make it quicker for parents to vet the book and really allow anyone to decide based on their own personal opinion of what they think is appropriate or acceptable or even just interested in. Fanfiction has tags for a reason; add tags physically this way.
I also think romance novels for a long while felt like the book your mom reads. it didn't feel "young". I was in high school during the dystopian sci-fi craze. No one was reading romance. Oh, we liked romance plots in the books (ie twilight, Cassandra Clare, etc), but no one in my high school would have willingly picked up a romance book because the cover art was still Fabio, or too realistic, and too Gen x. These cartoons as you say, make them younger, softer, and coupled with the fact that we as a society are leaning towards softer content across the board (rise of Bridgeton is a great example), it makes sense.
I feel like people are reaching for “younger” content for the lack of a better word. Our gen still likes period dramas but they must be highly modern and anachronistic in some way. Bridgerton. Dickinson. The buccaneers. My lady Jane. They all have a certain levity. The great. Harlots. Previously the most popular period dramas were those that were most authentic and covered interesting periods of history. Now those are few in number and largely on premium channels. Meanwhile people consume the modern shows but still complain. They see iPhone face, complain about non-period specific styling, and complain about plot lines.
Yes! (altho, i'm not sure what you mean by "softer content". Bridgerton seems like a move towards increasingly explicit mainstream media imo)
@@hypercortical7772 haha you’re right, I skip those scenes lol. I mean, I just remember in 2019 when everything coming out was a horror movie, and every TV show had to be dark and ominous and it was super annoying
@@BatshevaDueck. I'm finding the opposite problem. you can never pick up a nice horrifying story without it being turned into a love triangle and ruined. the worst part is as soon as that happens I know it can't end without them succeeding cause that won't appeal to romance audiences so now it's predictable.
I like the “Fabio” type of cover 😅 I’m 24 fyi
They give “corporate Memphis” which is an art style used predominately by tech companies and I find it to be a really huge turn off on book covers. I prefer a graphic illustrative book cover but the current trend in style is so lifeless and generic and just feels like corporations revealing themselves more explicitly in yet another facet of life. Like I know books are published by huge corporations but I don’t want to be explicitly and constantly reminded of that by the bland art on the book I’m reading. Books are largely escapism for me and this kind of cover does nothing to contribute to the illusion then story inside is creating.
Agreed. I like Emily Henry books but the covers are aggressively bland.
I've been reading some "sexy" cozy fantasy lately on Kindle Unlimited and have found authors putting a "content warning" page at the start of the book which is super nice. They're often similar to what you get as content warnings from movies." This book contains sexual content, violence and death" or "this is a sweet love story with an age gap" etc. It doesn't give away any plot or spoilers but lets you know quickly if this book is something that might not be for you. I think having a page like this in books would make it easier for most people but especially parents. I don't know about everyone else but I don't go to a bookstore and look up reviews of every single book I'm interested in and I highly doubt parents have time to do this for each book their kids might want. I'm not a parent but if I was, I would hope that I could at least rely on the bookseller to properly identity age appropriate books/sections. Having a content warning page though would make it easier for everyone of all ages to identify if a book is something they might not be interested in or might not be appropriate.
I also have content warnings, right on the Amazon page. My stories touch on some taboo subject matter & I don’t want someone to have a bad experience reading my books. That said, I’ve been told I over-warn, like an animal violence warning for three sentences in a battle scene where someone spears a horse.
since u mentioned how the majority of books in stores aren't intended for children, im thinking 2 myself, couldn't we put stickers on books that ARE suitable for kids and younger teens? i understand it's never really simple, but it seems like a more efficient version of the adult content warning stickers.
Either that or proper categorizing I've heard a lot of female authors can get shoved into YA just for being female i feel like if they would consider the books not just sales they'd actually be in the proper spot
I’m here to give my opinion on what you talked about so here it goes
I do thinks that cartoonish covers look good and have beautiful colors but lately I feel like every single romance that they publish looks the same. It makes me instantly be uninterested in the story because I feel that it will be the same romance story and it feels repetitive.
I DO think there should be a 18+ sticker on book covers or anywhere where parents can see it’s not appropriate for kids. I also thinks that maybe they can even add the main trigger warnings of the code to a code bar at the begging of the book! As a teacher I see firsthand how reading inappropriate things can affect children specially when they are innocently interested in a book because of the back cover and end up reading things that can either traumatize them or intrigue them in a negative way! I’m all in for protecting children’s innocence 💪
And I think that using AI to do book covers is a cheap and easy solution to do a cover. I think that using IA is basically accepting that we don’t need artist’s talent to use create things. It is disrespectful to art itself I believe.
Writers are artists in a way too so imagine having AI write a book for itself?!?! Then we are done as society.
AI really freaks me out and the easy access and addiction for it will do unreversed damage to our children in the future.
Thank so much for sharing this amazing information 🙏🏼
I 100% agree with literally everything you said!
Thank you for this video! My beef with the trend is that many times YA covers will be gorgeous and lush, but the adult covers will be cartoons. What? As an avid romance reader, I find these simple covers to be insulting. I hope this trend will die soon.
Same!!
I have thought about the cover trend quite a bit lately. I actually despise the cartoon ish covers. The drawings look so amateurish and silly, they may as well be stick figures. I can't depend on the cover to give me a glance at the characters anymore. I also am not fond of seeing portraits of real people on covers. I do kind of miss the clinch covers, they at least were more artistic and interesting. Now I have to do more research on a book before buying it, or listen to word of mouth, then I buy it in spite of the ghastly amateur cartoon drawings on the cover. The covers never make me curious about the story any more.
I think one of the reasons why many of them seem amaturish, is that there's no movement to the characters, they just look static and still. There's no flow or anything, it's wild. You can go in the children's section and grab the most cartoonish-looking graphic novel and they're typically 10x better looking because they have flow to them. Hell, I'm sure there are actual stick figures out there that look better!
The covers kinda remind me of the Candy Apple books for kids. Just a bunch of the same static poses and bright colours. I'm not sure who finds them appealing other than actual children.
Honestly no matter how interesting something sounds if it has one of those ugly low effort cartoon covers I'm not buying it, even if everyone I know loved it
@@smilingstingray5537 it's a lack of drawing skills. also fast to produce. now anyone who draws a blob in photoshop with a little texture can claim to be an illustrator
Next Generation Corporate Memphis!
They just aren't though
I feel like, as long as adult books are properly shelved in the adult section, there’s no problem. Maybe online retailers should be required to have them sorted or tagged as adult. Also, I hate the cartoon covers as a purely subjective opinion
Jesus christ how is it that in 2024, with such a massive glut of animation for adults easily available and thriving for *decades*, people STILL see anything stylized or "cartoony" as "clearly for children." South Park has been running for nearly 30 years, The Simpsons has been around for even longer, and anime is more popular than its ever been. Ralph Bakshi's work came out nearly 60 years ago. How much longer are people going to continue to make this frankly asinine assumption?
Excellent point.
I don't read romance (often), but one thing that I am fed up of seeing on book covers in general is boring designs. When I started reading sci fi and fantasy back in the 90's the book covers were usually beautiful pieces of artwork in their own right and they helped me to decide if I wanted to read a book or not. In the late 2010's to now, I've started to notice a trend to simpler designs and (therefore, boring) in a lot of ways and they make every book in a genre look the same. If it's a boring cover, now, most of the time I only pick it up to read if I've read the author before. AI generated images are bad, not just because of the plagiarism/stealing of art, but because if people see a complicated image they now assume that it's AI generated so that's bad for a real artist if people don't believe that they made the image themselves. However, covers have been made by computer for a long time now so a lot of the boring covers are made from vector images found in image programs like photoshop, or complied from different images edited together in image programs so that's just as bad as the AI generated images. I suspect that one of the reasons why covers have gravitated towards cartoonish images is because they are vector images and it's easier to edit them in an image program if they are simple to manipulate. If the book covers are mainly hand drawn/painted whether traditionally or digitally, then great, if not, then it's bad and will badly effect artists either way.
My library used to be super strict about taking out explicit books, they had a little red sticker on every book that was 18+ and if someone who had a children’s library card, or had an adult one but looked younger than 18 tried taking it out they would be asked for ID. I think bookshops should have a similar policy, have an indicator on the book or even just the price sticker that it’s explicit and don’t sell it to children.
I wish my library did this! I'm not fond of censorship in general (slippery slope. Where will it end?) But there are things that kids just shouldn't read until they're older. So I was shocked to find my local library shelving p*rn manga in with the children's books, simply because the staff believed all manga/comics were for kids. (Not only did I have to stop and show them the graphic/explicit content, but the very blatant 18+ warnings on the back)
At the very least libraries should be aware of what they're buying based on content rather than covers or blurbs and what age range those books are suitable for.
This isn't exactly a new problem. When my parents and I would go to the book section at Walmart, there wasn't a clear distinction between YA and everything else. If the book was within my parents normal price range (less than 10 dollars) I could get it. If the back of the book seemed innocuous enough, I could get it. My parents were older and both working. A bunch of senior girls were talking about 50 shades when I was 14 and a freshman. I got it, my parents bought it for me. They had no idea. I HAD NO IDEA. I wanted to read any and everything and if it was a popular book, I picked it up. I cannot imagine what I'd be picking up today as a kid who wanted to read anything and everything.
As for more cartoonish covers, I really really don't like the "people on the cover" trend unless it is true historical fiction. I saw someone else comment that the "bodice rippers" were books for bored and lonely housewives. People knew what you were reading. Now its a little more quiet. I do agree that there needs to be better separation between what is acceptable for certain age brackets and I feel like that needs to go somewhere on the book. Sort of like how there's a "recommended age" on kids books, why do they stop that? they can put "18+" and the reason I feel like that is viable and not censorship is because of 1. your example of music having an E on it, and 2. movies and shows having a rating system.
I feel like it's not super slippery if we get a set rating system like with music and other media.
When I was young, books would always have an age rating in with the publication info at the front of the book.
Although I found they were more for reading level and not based on content.
I feel that some cartoon covers (like red, white and royal blue or check&mate) look good from afar BUT if you look them closer the characters faces look so bad I need them to look good from all perspectives it’s frustrating
Screw AI art
Straightforward, i like it
I can't speak for ice breaker, I can't check cause it's in storage but wildfire does have an 18+ thing on the back at least australia version does any way, it's tiny but it's there lol so that's pretty cool and other publishers could do that
I spent most of my budget on my cover and design when I was working on putting out my debut. It paid off so well too! I got my dream cover, my book was way more successful than I expected it to be because people ate up that cover! It’s one of the reasons I chose to do indie, I like the control of doing what I want and representing my books how I see them. And people tell me it’s the prettiest book on their shelf all the time, even over their special editions! So I consider that a huge win. And no cartoons necessary 🤣 though mine is fantasy romance so thankfully it hasn’t fully cartooned up yet, mostly it’s just the same composition shot every time with a variation of skulls and roses and daggers
Canva cover syndrome
Simple explanation: Type is arranged in a rectangular frame and clamped in place. Then it's placed on a flat bed in the press. The moving frame (not the actual name, but a decent description) is pulled back over it as ink rollers press ink onto the type. The impression cylinder, a large padded cylinder, grabs a sheet of paper from the feed end, then rolls it over the type as the moving frame is pulled back to the other end where the paper is removed and the ink cylinders pick up fresh ink for the type.
I started out in hot metal type setting in the 1980s and went on to run the presses. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.
Platen presses are simpler and use a flat padded platen plate to hold the paper and press it to the type. They're smaller and make it easier to control different impression pressures across the type. Better for die cutting.
Cartoon drawings are not only for children
this book cover art style is why i thought red, white, & royal blue was a silly cute (straight?) romance, and why i was super duper shocked when i turned on the movie and it was the opposite! why would you want to advertise your product so poorly :')
i totally understand why you wouldn’t expect the smut but im a bit surprised that you didn’t realise it was a gay romance? the cover has two men on it & the synopsis says it’s about a romance between the son of the president & the prince of england.
I don’t know if they just weren’t your preferred genre or if you’re just young but these kinds of cartoon covers were the norm for a very large swathe of cozy mysteries and new adult romances in the late 2000s and 2010s. From Meg Cabot romances to Katie MacAllister paranormal romance to murder mysteries like How to Murder and Millionaire these covers were everywhere.
I may be old fashioned, but I want the cover to give me a sense of the book. Avant guard or generic cartoon often have nothing to do with the story inside. As I am scrolling through a bookstore, my first impression is the cover. If it has nothing to do with the description of the book, it leaves me frustrated--excitement followed by letdown. I prefer photo-realistic covers tied to the story. As a self-published author, one of the most enjoyable parts of the publishing process is working with a graphic artist to come up with the cover. It is a back-and-forth eventual meeting of the minds. You are normally given a few options and a set number of suggestions/corrections (depending on how much you pay for your cover package). The cover of my first novel, for example, started off as a cartoon cover but after several swings and misses, I found a second cover designer who was willing to work with my vision of giving the reader a good sense of what the book was about, a cold case centered around an old photograph of something unbelievable. In the end, the cover looked something like the old, scratchy photograph I described in the novel, sufficiently eerie. Several readers have commented that the only reason they read the book was because of the cover.
Here’s the thing about special editions: Most of them come in a subscription box where you don’t get a say in which ones you get. You can hope for a specific book, but there is no guarantee. So yes. You do end up with a bunch of special editions of books that you have never read, but on the plus side, even if it turns out a book is not to your taste, you can always sell it and get your money back. It is a lot easier to get what the book is worth when it is a special edition.
Cartoons aren't just for children. I wish people will get that.
WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE. but the issue of children getting ahold of explicit books is still an issue. so why not fix it? not by getting rid of cartoon adult covers, but by other means. clear disclaimers. sheaths or stickers or stamps on the back. so parents can be included in + aware of their child's activities, which is a parent's responsibility.
I'm with people saying that it should be more common to have a page dedicated to trigger warnings. Maybe at the end of the book? So those who want can go in blind and people who do have some triggers they _very much_ want to avoid can go look, and so parents can get a quick overview.
As for the 18+ warning, maybe have it be integrated in a subtle way on the back cover? If you're looking for it, you can see it. If you don't care, it's not glaring loudly at you and you can't be embarrassed by it because it's not advertising itself to the world loudly.
I don't mind cartoon covers on books that aren't explicit/have very adult themes. Some books really are suitable for everyone from teenagers to older readers and I think those can be very good with cartoon covers. Because even if they're considered adult books, as they follow older characters, they won't be harmful to younger readers.
I just finished reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and I think it falls into that. The two main (human) characters are 70 and 30 years old. They both have adult problems, but really they're human problems. The book touches on grief, but I think it's a good read at practically any age. I would have been disappointed there wasn't any fantasy in it if I read it at 13, but I think it still would have gone over well. The book has a cartoon cover that makes it feel very youthful, but the contents feel ageless in a way.
What I find interesting is that the "cartoon" stylized covers are almost all lineless. Though it makes sense, since things with outlines don't come out as well when shrunk into tiny thumbnails on tiny screens. I wonder if we'll see a trend drifting those towards other art styles in the future.
I worked at a bookshop for almost a year and Romanian publishing houses do tend to put +17/+18 marks on books, but they’re always at the back, near the barcode, and most people don’t even see them. There are also collections named “Midnight Books” that only publish romances with mature content. But preteens or young teens will see a cartoonish cover and run with it, and parents don’t check for age restrictions. A mum wanted to buy Ugly Love for her fourteen year old daughter and I told her I don’t think the book is suited for her, but she insisted on buying it anyway. I wish I could have turned down customers like these, but the shop wasn’t selling enough as it was, so yeah
The cartoon covers and the only reason I buy them otherwise I would never pick up a romance because the old covers are so disgusting to me lol
It's the first time i stumble upon your videos and I was expecting a bigger enphasis on your personal opinion and the problems the cartoonification of book covers might entail, but I really enjoyed how you brought up the history of book covers, -i'm really interested in how art happens in history and how it affects our interaction with the world, very well researched!
As for the problem of editorials advertising teen books the same way they advertise adult books, spice or not, tbh i think it's way simpler than a lot of people might think. After all, shows, movies and videogames have had content warnings for as long as i remember, physycal copies often include a series of symbols that indicate mature content such as violence, profanity, sex and drug use, and platforms like netflix and disney+ give warnings on the corner of the screen about potentially inappropriate content, including tobacco usage! I dont tjhink it's wild to ask editorials and even impose a mandatory set of symbols onto potentially inapropriate books, as well as age ratings. It's reasonable to ask for parents to monitor what their kids consume, but not to expect them to read every book their kids choose, or reasearch every review (specially if a book is new or not that well known). A set of symbols like this not only warns that a read might be explicit, but also filters any sort of content that could be inappropriate, you might be willing to let your teenager read about nudity or violence, but not explicit sex or drugs. And it doesn't even have to disturb the design, it can be adapted to whatever style the book is aiming for and placed on the back, that way when you read the synopsis you also get a warning of what you or your kid might get into while reading it.
Ive never seen someone with such blue eyes. I feel like i could describe your blue orbs (lol) like the mc does in a romance novel its insane
obvs this is a whole different can of worms, but the issue of covers following the author's wishes and also potentially being misleading immediately made me think of lolita (ofc the content of the novel itself is controversial and often misinterpreted) but vladimir nabokov didn't want it to be published with any kind of girl on the cover because he knew it'd look like a romance, meanwhile it's like impossible to find a version of the book, whether us or internationally published, that doesn't have a girl on it or at least refer to the heart-shaped sunglasses in the 60s movie adaptation, which isn't even in the book iirc. total tangent, but this was a great video!!
As a young child of 90s I remember seeing those Romance books every time I went to the story with my mom and thinking, “why is it the same guy on all these books that mommy says are trash and we don’t read???” I was very confused and also wonder why his shirt was always undone🤨
Why mark the Adult books at all? Mark the Kids & YA books as "E" for Everyone, and then parents only have to look for the "E" that they should be used to looking for in Movies and Video Games.
100%
i loved the history! it think it really added a lot and made me appreciate how much i not only take books being accessible for granted, but also how new visual design for mass-marketing purposes is in the grand scheme of human culture. i think we have a lot left to learn, but as far as the cartoon covers, i don't think adults would have been comfortable identifying with the cute vibes of cartoon covers a decade ago, and i'm going to favorably interpret that as we're culturally getting more open with the warm fuzzy feelings that mammals like us crave🥰
and your editing was candy as always! 🍬🍭
p.s. i still love that top!✨
You know what? I'm with you on that interpretation haha 😆 and omg you are so sweet 🥰 🥰 🥰
Me 23 seconds in: “Oh yes Sara you’re so right, preach it”
I accidentally found the person that does many of these covers on etsy. The three feet apart not actually interacting ones. They undercharge. A LOT. Like 50$ a cover. The editors are just being cheap. There's also AI there and book cover websites that are getting overwhelmed with AI instead of their usual photobashes or 3d renders.
Others are comic book artists/Illustrators who can at least add character to the cover like the Ali Hazelwood ones. It hurts because I am a comic artist and I like the "cartoon" style if they're actually illustrative of the book and not just standing around. If we can't have the lusty paintings of the 80s then I don't want the boring flowers and horses that came after that. An 18+ indication is nice but Barnes and Noble already has an indication of what books are for kids: They have their own section that is literally walled off in most of the stores I've been in. If it's not in the kids section it's not for kids.
There's been some more painterly covers popping up in monster romance and those are great. Like new Ruby Dixon and Katee Robert, but that genre is also rife with AI.
I am amazed by the work that went into this video!! The research, the pacing, the intonation, and that editing!!! All of it is so good! I really appreciate it
Adult content can include adult themes like mourning death or racism, or graphic violence. Or it might have one scene vs. the whole book.
It is not the same as Erotica, so the 18+ sticker would be misleading when they're eventually treated the same as Erotica. I think we should just be better consumers (especially parents. It takes 30 secs to vet the book (especially if you're BUYING it). Doing our research before purchasing doesn't stop with food and safety.
And yes. It's going to stigmatize romance further, particularly LGBTQ+ romance.
I see this as an extension of people having trouble making the shift from YA to adult books. And then they keep reading YA books but criticize them for being immature.
I do like when I can identify the genre and tone of a book from the cover, and it's frustrating when it communicates the wrong thing. It's like biting into what you think is a chocolate chip cookie and getting raisins. I like raisins fine, but not when I'm expecting chocolate.
Right now, this cartoonish style does effectively communicate "contemporary romance"...to people who know the convention. But man, does it infantilize the genre.
Didn't expect a little history lesson too, very nice! :)
Came for the bashing of lazy covers, stayed for the history lesson.
Also, as an American, I don’t have a lot of trust in the big-brand marketing teams. It eels like they never actually understand the people they’re marketing to.
(I also think it’s silly to not want characters shown on the cover, especially if the characters are described in-story. It becomes a problem when the cover characters don’t match the book descriptions, though.)
Personal opinion, I prefer to read clean romance books and I usually see the cartoon covers, which to me look sweet and innocent, only to find out that they have content I don’t prefer to read. I’d love it if there could be a spice meter of some kind on the first page of the book. Then everyone could decide for themselves and the marking wouldn’t be on the outside of the cover so no one would feel judged .
Hot key books (teen book publisher in the UK) actually does something like this. They have keywords near the barcode.
Adding an age recommendation like with manga is a good idea, but adding key words or pictograms (like the Dutch kijkwijzer and even libraries do) is a good plan. I've seen books in libraries here that have they symbol for explicit violence or sex on them and I've seen them in stores too, but not very many times. I think the pictograms are smart. You can make them universal everywhere and a store/library can just hang a list in a visible place. Putting it on the spine (in a library) or next to the barcode (in a store) makes very innocuous to check as the barcode shows the price as well and many books also have a synopsis on the back.
It would be great to see this more..
28:30 The only problem I have with special editions Is that They are becoming the standard edition. Here in Italy we have got a publishing house (Mondadori) which at first releases the hard cover version of a book, with the beautiful art inside . They are Amazing , but they cost 25 euros. To buy the standard paperback you have to wait a year or more, and cause of this I cant read some of the books i'm interested in right after they come out.
Im sorry.... but im not putting my minimalist cartoon books up for display XD thats on par with putting my DVD of 6teen on the mantel XD
Im not saying they arent well produced book covers and pieces of art work.
But the books I display are the unique ones, the ones that show craftmanship, ones with intricate deisgns, and ones that had stories that really resonated with me. I think that last one applies to a lot of us.
(Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinion and expression for what they display, im not trying to make anyone feel bad. You do you, boo)
Also, I found Ice Breaker at target, and it was surrounded by 6 other hockey smut-romance books. All at chest level or lower. I 100% would have grabbed that book at like 13. A lot of SUPER reader kids have parents who literally can't keep up with checking what their kids read. Some parents don't care, some just don't realize that they can't trust book shops to properly organize adult content from youth content.
If naming my vape "Unicorn Snot" is marketing to kids, then putting cartoons on smut is marketing to kids.
(Not against smut, just against smut for kids.)
I didn't expect this to low key be a video essay!! Great work, loved the video :)
i think the “new adult” concept is a great one; if bookstores and libraries had a separate section from YA/teen for this genre like the do Adult, i feel like the problem would be solved. and then there isn’t any fighting about what constitutes 18+ or what is actually explicit. if it has new adults in it, it’s new adult! it would probably still cause some disagreements, but i think it’s the best possible solution🤷🏼♀️
also you are so well spoken! such a great video🫶🏻
I think teen books in the UK used to have age recommendations (ie my local library having teen, and teen+ stickers) above their barcodes, but I don't know if they still do. It's been a long while since I looked at children and young adult books. I do think having the 18+ on them, maybe not as a sticker, but above the barcode on the back would be beneficial. Since then a customer is looking at the blurb, then the price of the book and can see the 18+ on it.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the cartoon cover, Which sucks for me
I want to see more traditional art on covers. I like digital art but I really think we should get more traditional covers, they just always work so well
Haha. You hate it but I ordered the Lady MacBeth hardcover specifically because I love the cover art. I love that her gaze is penetrating with one eye while the other eye is mysteriously veiled. It totally fits what the novel is about and I thought it would make good reading for the approaching spooky season.
This was so well done and entertaining! Thank you for taking the time to put all this together. Can’t wait to see more from you! ❤
This was such a well made video, I love your editing! I don't have anything against special editions usually, but it didn't sit well with me when the latest special editions of Sarah J Maas books had different bonus chapters you could only get in certain special editions, encouraging people to buy multiple copies of the same books.
It’s interesting living in Canada, because it’s a toss up whether we get the American edition or UK edition.
I feel like when I was a kid it was much more likely we would have the UK edition and now it is more likely to find the American.
I live in Germany and in the English section of the bookstore we also get an interesting mix of US and UK covers.
If there’s a couple kissing on the cover then it’s a romance book, wether the people on the cover look. like cartoons or not. If ur child asks to read a book you’re either going to have to buy it yourself, which means your going to have to be the one buying it and that means you can read the back cover and know what the book is actually about. Or they’re going to get it from a library, which means the librarian should be the one curating books to make sure they’re age appropriate.
Or you can google whether it's age-appropriate. It takes like 10 seconds
@@emiliapawny4746seriously this
Libraries are not generally staffed well enough to police what people read, even if it were ethical according to the American Library Association. That's why parents exist. Do I redirect people when they are looking for something in the wrong section? Yes. Do I wince when young people pick books that are graphic? Yes. But unless a parent or guardian specifically prohibits, our responsibility is to the reader.
@@emiliapawny4746 I despise this argument so much. you are not required to have a device connected to the internet on your person at all times. Would we accept this argument for things such as, let's say, television programmes? "Why would we have an age rating before a broadcast, just google it."
Putting more and more burden on the consumer means that corpos get away with more and more. It is not about good parenting. It is about duty of care which is not given because it would limit and scandalise the audience and this reduce sales.
I purposely put content warnings on the back of all my novels (unless it's obvious it's for kids). Nice video.
So I don't necessarily see the issue with giving a rating or content warning for books that have suggestive or explicit material. I don't necessarily see it as censorship as informative labeling to let the reader know what is in it. This could not only help prevent explicit content from getting into the hands of children but it would also allow readers determine if that is the kind of book they want to read. Also, we do this for movies so why shouldn't we do this for books as well?
As an American I absolutely love UK covers. Specifically for certain fantasy series. Like Brandon Sanderson novels in the US are gaudy and terrible looking. But the Gollancz covers are simple and beautiful. So I’ll pay for the shipping and wait a really long time to import them.
If nothing else, i think that a little "18+" should be printed on the book. Similar to how manga is printed. We cant fully control kids accessing this media unfortuntaly(heck i was reading fan fiction well before i should have been), but by printing age limits on books, maybe we can help the parents that dont have unlimited time to screen everything their children partake in. Like you said, there is only so much time in a day.
as an artist who does album cover art for metal/punk bands, wouldn't want anyone but myself designing the cover of my novel
The removable printing method was popularized in China since its conception around 1040:
The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990-1051).
I like the sticker idea, I think they should use the similar grading as movies - PG, PG 13, PG 16, R
Usually PG13 & 16 have profanity and R are explicit content and constant swear words. More and more books are not including trigger warnings for mentioning certain themes so it shouldn't be too much of a leap to do an age rating too.
What I don’t understand is since when young adult has turned into children? Young adult implies people aged over 18
Okay this class was amazing but the EDITING?!?! Amazing!!!!! Great work Sara🙌
Aww! Thank you!! 🥰 💕
Fabio ruled the world!! And he leaned into it too, probably why the charm and hype. You just had to be there 😅.
One thing we see with the book bans and such is classifying any queer content as “adult” which could be a problem with any mandated 18+ note as well.
But, in general, it would be nice to have some indication of the content and this feels like a failure of marketing. You’d think it would be a good thing for readers to be able to find the right “spice level”, as it were. And bookstores aren’t libraries, but they often have passionate employees who enjoy finding the right book for the right person, but it seems they aren’t getting the right cues from the publishers.
Hey there. About content warnings. In my country the sign 18+ is printed on the cover as part of the design. It doesn't matter what genre the book belongs too. For example, I have a literary fiction book about WWI and it is 18+. When you go directly to the store and see that a book is wrapped in plastic, it's s definitely R rated. I remember I had to show my ID a couple of times to purchase some books like that.
I think when it comes to the age rating of a book, it it something that could be easily done without harming the publishing company(sales-wise). When it comes to video games there's always a rating attributed to it regarding the content of the game. For instance, two games could be rated M(Mature), but have completely different things that labeled them as such. If regulations exist for games and movies, i believed books should have some sort of official rating placed either on the side or the back.
The line between adult fiction and YA fiction is kinda blurry, but a lot of YA fiction has profanity and sexually explicit content as well. However, the kind of sexually explicit content may be different in YA books. It might not be as graphic as adult fiction. But, I do agree with the comments talking suggesting the age recommendation by the barcode like manga does.
23:00 Honestly, I can totally understand a parent failing to properly vet a book, especially if their kid is a big reader. It's the fact that most of the novels shown so far are all in my local library's YA section.
They need to be SO FUCKING CAREFUL when labeling these books and they just aren't and it drives me up the wall.
Plus, they have a ridiculous "Teen" label that shares shelves with the YA fiction that is a mix of just YA, that New Adult Fiction mentioned in the video, and a couple of instances of straight p*rn (a slight exaggeration, but only slight). As a middle schooler, I would check out stacks of books from the Teen and YA section, my parent's thinking it was completely fine because these books were supposedly for my age range, and then I'd be reading very explicit sex scenes in the middle of class (not that I'm personally mad about that, but it seems immoral on a level).
I love my local library, but they really need to be better in this sense.
I kind of think it’s silly for people to think that teens don’t know beforehand that a book like icebreaker has r rated content in it. They probably heard about it from their friends or saw it on TikTok, and I think that it’s honestly a normal thing for teens to be drawn to that. Teens are deeply curious about sexual themes and often sexually active whether their parents know about it or not. I think that a lot of the discussion around these books has a lot of “adults clutching their pearls” flavor to it. As a teen I read all kinds of books, many with adult content, some with problematic themes, and it would have just been weird and oppressive for my parents to have been motoring what I was reading? I didn’t just read ya or things aimed at me as a teen. I think it’s actually better for a teen to be introduced to some adult content through a book than through porn. Even if the book has issues. I think it also doesn’t make sense to think that the cover of a book should reflect the “spiciness” of a book. Also, if I pick up a book and it has more smut in it than I was expecting or want (I’m more of a fan of fade to black and find smut cringe usually at this point), it’s actually okay? It’s actually easier for me to skip over smut in a book than it is for me to skip over a graphic sex scene in a show or movie. But those are just some of my thoughts.
I recently strolled through the Target book sections and did see almost all the adult novels mentioned in this video in the YA section. Now I am not here to judge, my parents were fine with me consuming risky media at a young age and I think I turned out fine, but it was something I did notice.
I actually will add an additional two cents...I am a little exhausted of the American censorship. There has always been a puritan culture in this country that wants to hide sex and tragedy (especially from children), and now more than ever with multiple states trying to ban books in schools. We do not need 18+ stickers on books, the music industry had to start because of the Satanic Panic in the 80s, and movies use to be policed by The National Board of Censorship which were backed by Protestants in the early 1900s followed by many other censorship groups. I am in favor of parents checking the books of their children if they have concerns, but it does not need to be pushed onto everyone else.
Honestly, I would love it if people just remembered who YA is for T-T I swear I have heard people things it's for young adults and not teens.
I honestly personally don't like how saturated the Romance genre is with... You know... Woohooing as the sims might say. Like when I read a romance novel I am here to the banter and stuff and the kiss :3 Like because of this I am worried about reading modern romances ;-; Most modern I have gotten was a book published in 2013 written by my favorite author! (The book is Outcast by Adrienne Kress! Highly suggest it :333)
i feel like it’s a little silly to have to mark every single book for sale on if it’s 18+ or not because some parents can’t do a little cursory research to know what they’re kid is reading. if they don’t want their kids to read stuff that’s too mature for them, that’s perfectly understandable, but it should then be on the parents to keep track of that. it’s another situation where parents blame the world for not parenting their kid because they refuse to do it themselves.
Regarding special editions: it's kind of a non-issue because people can be consumerist about literally anything.
The only thing that kind of upsets me is that most books with special editions are extremely generic, sometimes even terrible but popular books with beautiful art but garbage, Tumblr character x y/n tag worthy content. I wish I could get a special edition of a Shakespeare's plays collection or Agatha Christie or even a non fiction book. But the only classics that get special editions are those that are popular with teens like Dracula or Dune (except for religious texts like quran or bible - those get really beautiful editions too) . There are classics with gorgeous covers but they are plain as any other edition inside
personally I love special editions for books that are considered classics, especially if they are designed to emulate the look of old books
another thing I feel should be important is correct categorization of books inside individual bookstores, the amount of times I went to the fantasy section, found a book with interesting name, cover, premise on the back... just to open it and find out it's actually a YA romance first and fantasy adventure that it promises... maybe second. if.
it makes everyone's life easier when you categorize the books correctly so that you know a child isn't likely to pick up a saucy book when browsing the shelves, because you can see what shelf it is actually from and what titles surround it. but also, I avoid the clipart style covers myself for one because they tend to be used in a genre I don't particularly enjoy and for two I often just don't like how they look. and if I want to buy a book I'd prefer enjoying how it looks on the shelf as well as the contents
but also, no way, THAT'S why all the bodice ripper novels have the same looking dude on them?! because IT IS THE SAME DUDE!!?
As a librarian I really hate these covers! It's onlt because they look exactly like the YA/J fiction so I'm always scared a teen is gonna read something they don't want to or feel uncomfortable about 😭 It's a nightmare and I wish they would go back to covers without the cartoony art :/
I love the cartoon colors, they mean not seeing the human models anymore 😭
I mean, we have age ratings on film and tv, on video games, explicit warnings on music, and none of those industries have collapsed. I don’t see a big issue with having age ratings for books.
I do wish there was some sort of warning that could be placed on the inside of the dust jacket or something like that for 18+ romances. partially because I want to be sure *I* know what I'm getting into! I know in this day and age most people shop at bookstores with their phone on hand, but sometimes I like to immerse myself into the feeling of the bookstore and not get influenced by reviews, so some kind of visual tell would be nice.
I personally like the cartoon covers.... Especially compared to shirtless men etc..
From my knowledge, most of the barcodes have the age range on the back, like adult, young adult, etc...
And anything but more stickers plz
i think there should be age recommendations written on book somewhere. i know many manga have them, many comic books will have a symbol if they're 18+, and i've seen a very small handful of young adult novels with something like "for 15+" or "for young readers" written on them. i also think that booksellers should be diligent in what's shelved in young adult vs adult. it's one thing if a teenager deliberately purchases something from the adult section and it happens to have smut, that's on them, but there's a difference between that and smut books being directly marketed to teens.
i also think that people who want to foist 100% responsibility on the parents are off the mark. not only because there should be some responsibility on the publisher and the bookseller for how they're choosing to market a certain book, but also because encouraging parents to control everything their children read can be really harmful. something something book bans something something. personally, when i was in middle school, my own mother checked over everything i wanted to get from the bookstore before she would buy it for me, and the only real thing that led to was her preventing me from reading books with queer characters. as i entered high school it was more common that i would be given cash when i went out with friends and so i could buy what i wanted without her checking me, and now obviously she has no control over what i read, but for a while i could only queer books, even books aimed at my age or younger, from the library, where she wouldn't check what i checked out (and that's only if they even had them at the library)!
New York Review of Books publishing and British Library vintage mystery reissues are consistent and elegant.
I usually hate book covers with model photographs. Illustrated and graphic covers all the way.
I read all of my special editions. I just love that I can love a story and a pretty book. 😄 Also, I never really thought about the influence of cartoon art on children and I thought that you made excellent points. A lot of romance books are putting trigger warnings in the first few pages of a book which is, in a way, a content warning. I think that an age sticker would bother a lot of people (I don't like any stickers on my books if I can avoid them). I'm the kind of person that doesn't want the book story employee even asking if I need help finding something, lol 😂 I just saw a teenage boy run from his mom and the bookstore employee because his mom was asking on his behalf. Totally embarrassed, poor kid.
Thank you for your detailed research and presentation of this topic. Honestly, I did notice the trend, and I enjoy it. I would never buy a book with a Fabio cover. The cartoon covers have convinced me to expand my reading into the romance genre, which I never would have done during previous eras. Thanks to the trend, I have found new authors and new books I love that I never would have even considered if they had traditional romance covers.
I don’t mind the cartoon covers, I just hate when they’re ugly. If the book cover hinges on the cartoon characters at least make them look detailed and appealing.
I definitely judge those who read cutesy cartoon cover books, major side eye. 👀👀