Cover Girls: Honestly, Publishing, I Hate You

So this week the whole Canadian part of the internet is furious because of this cover image of Anne of Green Gables not as an awkward 11-year old ginger but as a busty blonde midwestern farm girl.  We were not amused.  Hashtag Canadian Problems.

You suck, Amazon.

This, of course, came hot on the heels of Sylvia Plath and the Mystery of the Missing Context.  Apparently The Bell Jar is a sassy tale about women doin’ it for themselves!  With makeup!

Oh my god how confused would this reader be.

This, of course, is all in an effort to sex-up the classics and grab new readership.  I can’t help but think that confusing the shit out of readers isn’t necessarily the best strategy, but what do I know — I’m not in publishing.  So I think that if this is what we’re doing now, then I think we should really just go for it.  Like make the covers so confusingly disconnected from the text that it requires an additional layer of critical analysis to process.  I took the liberty of making some terrible mock-ups.  Don’t you just go ahead and swipe these, publishing!  I know they’re right up your alley!

That’s what that book was about, right?

Also solved: need for teenage boys to buy more YA.

Remember this Mark Twain classic?

I bet our readers can one-up me here, though. Post ‘em if you got ‘em in the comments!