Fans of Interracial Romance discussion
Specific IR Book Talk
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What do you think about this book?
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She could be black, or Indian or Native American or even Hispanic..........Or even a combination of those. I don't agree with the low rating based just on the cover. LOTS of covers don't match the written physical descriptions of the characters. It's one of my major pet-peeves with romance novels, but I've been learning to just go with it. It's just the way it is. Not the author's fault, but the publisher!!
I felt the same way. I think it's kind of unfair to rate a book on the cover because authors don't have a say in them most times. I think a lot of readers think we do. A lot of times authors are just as dismayed by their book's cover as readers might be but have no control. At the most the pub will ask you for input but they make the final decisions.Best Wishes!
http://www.stacy-deanne.net
Mod
I agree, Danielle. This is nothing new. I don't know why the author didn't complain and try to get the review removed. I think she has a good reason to. What the reader said wasn't even a "review" but a comment. They might not have even read the book once they found out the heroine wasn't black and that's not fair to the author. I think no matter how many stars you give a book you need to explain your feelings for the book. Reviews are for readers to learn about the book. Now me as a reader, she did nothing for me. LOL! She just said the woman wasn't black and gave it one star. I don't care. I still plan to check out the book because it seems it might be good.Another thing, is it that big of a deal if the heroine isn't black even if the reader thought she was? I mean, the book still might be good! Give it a chance, I say. Even if the reader was peeved about being mislead, I'd hope something other than a black woman being the main character would be a reason enough to check the book out. It might be a wonderful book and the reader gave it one star for the wrong reason.
I don't read reviews. I go by what my book friends say even though there has been times when one or more of them have raved about a book, I get it and end up not liking it. LOL!
Mod
I can understand the reader's disappointment. She probably did a BWWM search under books and this book was listed under the search. She did say the book was listed as BWWM. I don't know how it was listed as black woman, white man, but some how it was listed that way.
The Rock/Dwayne Johnson is half black/half Samoan. If a romance book was written about a half black/half Samoan man and white woman, wouldn't the book be listed as BMWW?
I know that The Rock looks Samoan, but I know when I have first seen The Rock, I saw a black man.
I usually can pick up when a person is part black.
The woman on the cover looks like she's half black and I know that a lot of people that's half black goes by black. Example: Halle Berry, Alyssa Locke, Michael Yo.
Book covers can be misleading. I know I had written an author years ago, about her cover. The heroine on the cover looked Blasian, but in the book she was white.
The reader didn't note that the cover mislead her to believe the book was about a BWWM, but that the book itself was tagged as being a BWWM book. That's why she has given the book a 1 star. She was mislead. Was she right for giving the book one star, because of the mislead information? The answer is no. But, I guess she felt it was her way of warning other's that the book is not about a BWWM.
If any of you want to read the book, go for it. BWWM aren't the only interracial books out there on the market. That's my number one interracial reading, but I do read other interracial stories as well, as long as their are a catcher and that goes for the BWWM stories as well. If they aren't a catcher, I will not give it my attention. The stories also has to fit in my reading category.
Mod
My aunts are in town, and we were driving back from dinner, and my aunt said she doesn't agree with interracial dating, at least from the perspective of black men with non-black women. I didn't really try to argue with her, but I said, I didn't care, because I think people should be with who they want. My aunt who lives in town said that the black women probably don't want them anyway. That was her flippant way of saying she was fine with interracial dating, which made me happy. I guess the reason I brought that up is because I hate that stay with your own and what's familiar attitude. I think it's good to go outside your own perspective and read about different people. It's sad when you see people so closed-minded posting shallow reviews like this.
I can understand being frustrated by the cover not adequately reflecting what is represented in the book, but that's usually not the author's fault. If it's an issue, just state so in your review. Don't downgrade the rating because of that. I don't like erotic elements, but if I run across some in a book that don't cause me to stop reading, I try very hard not to downgrade a book for those aspects just because. If it was well done, and it fit the story, I don't think it's fair to give a book one star just because of that.
Exactly, Danielle! Most times the author (unless self-publishing) has SQUAT to say about the cover! The pub picks covers they feel that will sell the book better.For example, I had a friend last year was extremely upset because her book was a regular romance yet the pub did a very sexually-explicit cover for it. When she tried to tell them to change it, they said it was better for marketing. But she didn't want her book with some sleazy cover. The cover wasn't even like normal erotica book covers. It looked almost like porn. She was very upset but couldn't do anything about it.
I can understand this reader felt mislead but readers don't understand that authors do not have a choice where their books are categorized. Anyone, anyone on Amazon can tag a book and it could not have anything to do with the book. I've seen readers tag books with something and you read it and half the tags don't even fit. As a reader, I would not give a one-star review just for something like this because you can't prove that the author or even the publisher mislead anyone. How do we know this reader didn't just see the cover and ASSUME the woman was just black? Then got mad when she wasn't? LOL! I mean it just seems stinky to me and very unfair to the author and like I said, she didn't do a review that helps other readers.
When's the last time someone has given a one-star review to a romance book when the heroine in the book was described as having black hair, yet on the cover she has yellow or brown? To me it's the same thing. I wouldn't give a one-star review only on being mislead on descriptions unless it was the plot. I might stop reading it and be upset, but I wouldn't just slam the book because of that one little thing. That's what I don't like about Amazon, people can just rate a book anyway and a lot of times it has nothing to do with the quality of the book.
I can understand giving a one-star review if the PLOT was misleading. That's a big thing. I've been peed off when I would watch a movie or read a book and the plot was totally different than what it was portrayed to be. I think yes, in that case (book or movie) maybe a one star fits. But then you still gotta look at, was the book well-written, was it still a good read whether or not something was presented wrong? It depends.
Authors don't have the power people think we do. Once we turn in our books, we can only tell the publishers what genre they are but they categorize the books and then a lot of times the retailers will put the book where they want it. And once folks start tagging, we get more confusion. LOL!
Sometimes an author doesn't even have any idea what a retailer has categorized their book as.
I wouldn't want someone to give me a one-star review and be blamed for misrepresentation if I had no choice in the matter.
Best Wishes!
THIS HAPPENED TO ME!My book Melody was categorized wrong everywhere and it really upset me. The main two characters were Latino/white and there was two main black female characters, and two white guy main characters.
My book was classified as AFRICAN-AMERICAN! Everywhere that book was put up, that is what it was classified as!
Even my other book, Everlasting about two Latino teens were classified as AA! I guess because I was with a black imprint, the retailers wanna assume the books should be classified as AA or because I was a black author? I don't know but this has happened to me before so I know how an author feels when they are blamed for something they have no control over.
What gets me is you have Latinos sitting up on both of these books of mine yet some idiot is gonna automatically just categorize them as AA? Why? See, it's the retailers and everyone else who categorizes books. The authors don't.
I am sure other authors in the group have had the same thing happen to them at one point. LOL! Yes it is frustrating but it makes it worse when folks blame the author or give a book a low rating just because of the cover.
Best Wishes!
Mod
A lot of publishers don't care if it's misleading. They just wanna sell books. This is happening with a lot of romance authors. I have heard others complaining that their books have covers that are too erotic. I guess pubs wanna cash in on that erotica money even if the book is just a regular romance. As for my friend, she got out of her contract right after that. She was gonna go with them for another book but felt they didn't respect her or her vision. She also didn't want them putting another cover on her next book that didn't match. It became a headache for her because reviewers who didn't review erotica would refuse her book until she explained that the cover was misleading and that her book was just a romance. Then readers were making comments that her book wasn't "sensual" enough and she had to keep explaining that it wasn't meant to be and that she had no control over the cover.Goodness. *shaking head*.
message 13:
by
The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears
(new)
Overall I have an open mind when it comes to romance, but I have yet to reach my saturation point for interracial romances featuring a black heroine and a hero of another ethnicity. Until that happenss, those are the novels I actively seek first. My hope is that someday they'll be on equal footing with mainstream romance, LOL, and we won't have to jump through hoops to find them.I do get pretty frustrated that some of my reader friends won't read out of their comfort zone. I don't get it. They can gush effusive about the latest vampire or shifter paranormal romance, but getting them to read an AA or an IR where the heroine isn't caucasian is like pulling teeth. It makes no sense that somehow they relate better to a mythical being than a human being of a different hue.
Unfortunately cover-fail happens everywhere.
Mod
Even if a author doesn't know that the publisher, etc. is going to put their book in a wrong category, they need to make the readers know their book status.
The reviewer of the book didn't say they looked at the cover and thought the book was about a BWWM. They made it known they were mislead to believe that it was a book about a BWWM.
Mod
We all have a comfort zone and some stuff we will not go near.
message 16:
by
The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears
(last edited Jul 29, 2011 08:09PM)
(new)
I know that Arch and that's cool. I guess that I like when readers are more open. Sometimes it's hard to be one of the few chicks who dig high fantasy or hard sci-fi. It's more fun to expand one's horizons than to be stuck in a rut. As the saying goes, a closed mind is like a parachute that won't open, LOL. Besides, it gives you more boks to read and that's always a good thing.
I was browsing on Amazon and came up on Destiny Wallace's book, "Alone at Last". What really got my attention was the one star review. A customer blasted the book because the heroine wasn't black. Is this fair? They claim the book was portrayed as a BW/WM book but I see no evidence of this.
Honestly I could tell that woman was not black. She looked Indian to me. The heroine in the book is supposed to be white and Hawaiian and the reader thought she was black.
I am not clear whether it could've been an assumption on the part of the reader that the woman was black or if it really was portrayed that way by the publisher or whoever.
Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Alone-at-Last-D...
Do you feel it's fair to give the author such a low rating based on something like this?
Best Wishes!
http://www.stacy-deanne.net