Pastel Paratexts and Literary Expectations: Gendered Marketing Practices in the US Book Industry

Norrick-Rühl, Corinna

Abstract

Like so many other sayings, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is an imperative that no one actually lives by. In today’s highly concentrated and conglomerate-dominated book industry, no book design decisions are coincidental. Every font choice, cover image and blurb contributes to the product placement of the literary text within the bookstore and in what Simone Murray has called the “digital literary sphere.” As Amanda Lastoria writes, the “commodified content [of books] and their objecthood impact whether or not we consume their content.” Book cover design today spans a wide range of expectations: the printed books have to appeal to readers (buyers) in the bookstore, but their flat digital counterparts as thumbnail images in online webshops need to be equally recognizable in a small format. This leads to certain aesthetics. As Margot Boyer-Dry quips, “[i]f books have design eras, we’re in an age of statement wallpaper and fatty text.” Beyond the thumbnail, many books take on a further digital iteration in photographic or video content on #bookstagram or #booktok, where bestsellers are made these days. These representations feed into a “cycle of online consumption” described by Lastoria in three stages: discovering, acquiring, and sharing. How does gendered marketing look offline, what does it look like online? How do marketing and design decisions come together to shape literary and genre expectations? How does the copycat effect play out in fiction purportedly produced for women readers?