Covers with men of color on the cover?

[[deleted user]]

While it's difficult to find women of color on the covers of books at your local brick and mortar stores, Im seeing men of color is even more difficult to find.

I guess the white male able bodied hero is the industry standard, but I'd have to say I'd enjoy seeing more Asian, Latino(of any race), Black, Native American/First Nation, Middle Eastern,and all the other racial identities one may not typically associate Caucasian with.

I just purchased a book with a biracial male on the cover. He's very cute, and reminds me of my sister's boyfriend, whom is also biracial(despite her boyfriend not being as dark as the cover model).

has what looks like an East Asian male on the cover, gotta say it looks nice =)

Despite having a boyfriend whom is not my race, I love men of all racial backgrounds =) And I'd love to celebrate more covers with men of color if anyone has any suggestions!

[[deleted user]]

All asian male book covers







this one also has a black kid

got my sources from here---->http://pinterest.com/jayang/coverasia...

[[deleted user]]

Reading this, beautiful cover. Not quite finished though.

[[deleted user]]

<---even though i wasn't a fan of the boo, I have to say that the cover is amazing



all black male covers either ya, fantasy or sci fi

[The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears]

Though I am not a fan of Cassandra Clare, I give her major kudos for insisting this cover prominently feature an Asian male on it, since he's one of the principal characters. She also insisted that Magnus Bayne be played by an Asian actor in the upcoming Mortal Instruments film. Just for those reasons alone, I will be seeing the movie. I wish more authors would be so brave and stop allowing the media to whitewash PoC's out.

[[deleted user]]

And Maguns Bane being portrayed by hot Taiwanese-Canadian import Godfrey Gao is icing on the cake =D

[[deleted user]]

Indian




East Asian






Middle Eastern maybe???

[Michael]

Myke Cole's Shadow Ops series have a black male on both covers and an Indian male on the second book's cover:

Control Point
Fortress Frontier

[Aya]

The model on the cover of Cassandra Clare's book is Asian??? I've seen it around lots of times, but never realized that! He looks more EuroAsian or even Southern European to me. Kudos to the author, but as an Asian woman myself, I didn't realize that until you guys pointed it out.

[[deleted user]]

Aya wrote: "The model on the cover of Cassandra Clare's book is Asian??? I've seen it around lots of times, but never realized that! He looks more EuroAsian or even Southern European to me. Kudos to the author..."

Well i guess i should point out that he's half asian.But he looks so similar to Canadian singer Justin Nozuka who's both Japanese and white.
http://hotelcafejunkie.wordpress.com/...

But still he has a hint of an asian appearance, perhaps I'm biased because I loooove Justin Nozuka.He's like the hottest thing in the world to me!So i always pictured him XD

[[deleted user]]

Thought this was interesting. A black male author wrote it about how he felt about there being very few black kids on covers. It's not angry or anything, just a sad reality :(

http://blog.varianjohnson.com/2013/05...

[Aya]

Libertad wrote: "Thought this was interesting. A black male author wrote it about how he felt about there being very few black kids on covers. It's not angry or anything, just a sad reality :(

http://blog.varianjo..."

Which is why I'm hoping indie e-book publishing will bring more diversity. We can decide what we want on the covers. How the readers respond is another story (there should be fewer white readers willing to read about people of color than vice versa), but I like being able to decide by myself. Not what publishers think what will sell.

Here's a relevant post: http://sjaejones.com/blog/2010/cover-... Although I'm not a fan of the original Asian cover (this is definitely NOT the style you see in East Asia), the point is that the publisher tried to change an Asian cover to make it look more appealing for Caucasian readers.

[[deleted user]]

Aya wrote: "Libertad wrote: "Thought this was interesting. A black male author wrote it about how he felt about there being very few black kids on covers. It's not angry or anything, just a sad reality :(

htt..."

The funny thing is i JUST BOUGHT this book like yesterday :P so i was looking up all this stuff about it the other day. The girl they have on the new cover only shows her from the cheeks down so for all you know she could be caucasian.

I agree with you Aya, i want to be able to choose the covers i want to see because quite frankly the ones many publishers choose are boring and done ALL the time.

As far as the style goes i hate to say that but American culture is very ignorant, many will just see any Asian girl and maybe a kimono or a Cheongsam and think "Oh that's so authentically Asian", so i'm sure publishers think they don't know the difference :P

[Ramsey]

My sentiments exactly. She's done a great job in bringing POC characters more prominence and Godfrey Gao, the actor they chose for Magnus, definitely has star potential. The fangirls (and some of the fanboys) are gonna crazy :)

TheFountainPenDiva wrote: "Though I am not a fan of Cassandra Clare, I give her major kudos for insisting this cover prominently feature an Asian male on it, since he's one of the princi..."

[Aya]

Libertad, actually my point was more about style than accuracy. In Taiwan, most of our genre fiction book covers feature illustrated models (like the one on my blog) rather than photo shoots. The models tend to have larger, rounder eyes, they look more cute and innocent and naive, which is the standard preferred style of beauty here. Although I do find the American covers of Asian models less attractive, I attribute it to a culturally-different perspective on beauty.

That being said, there are some covers really bespeak of ignorance. I haven't read the books, but I'm appalled at Jeannie Lin's historical romance novels set in China. For example, looks more like Japanese, in the male model looks to be from Quin dynasty, which is 1000 years later than Tang dynasty, where the book is set in.

And this takes the cake! The only thing that looks Chinese is the house in the background. The hero has SHORT hair--I have never known of men with short hair in any Chinese dynasty. I'd rather they use pretty landscapes or exquisite objects, which some of our romance covers use, if they can't even put a Chinese-looking model on the cover.