I Already Know This

Author Gwyn Cready's A Novel Seduction spends a lot of its time telling romance readers what they already know:  Romance novels are just like any other fiction.  There are really good, literary romances just as there are cookie cutter, banal romances.  The genre designation doesn't determine the quality of the writing.  As a reviewer, I was surprised that Cready felt she needed to make this point.

What's really sad is that since Cready's book emphasizes this enlighted thought, the cover of the book doesn't.  What's with the half-clad Highlander, wind whooshing his skirt in a Marilyn Manroe look-alike fashion?  The novel tells me that romances should be taken seriously; the cover tells me that Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte would have died of shame to see her work so maligned.

Get it straight, publishers!  Why profess one thing in the text and another in the cover?  Have you people no pride or sense of relationship between the inside and the outside of a product?  Obviously Pocket Books are going for the Playgirl buyer, not the serious romance reader.  I really hope this ploy backfires!