I have mentioned on several occasions my dislike of bad cover art. Well, I'm not the only reader who feels insulted when publishers put something tasteless, confusing or just plain butt ugly on a book cover. Click on the link (the post title) to see the results from the annual All About Romance worst cover contest. Unfortunately I somewhow managed to miss the 2005 voting, but never mind - I plan on voting in the 2006 contest.
This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
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Point being that I'm sure SOMEONE is going to complain no matter what you do.
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I agree and I think your magazine cover is a good example. If you click on the link and look at the contestants for best cover, there are a couple there that I would have rejected because of being too cheesy or too generic. The thing is that with book cover design, and especially romances, thrillers and science fiction, there is just so much sloppy design that could have been avoided by spending a little more time and money on it. Covers are a big selling point with many readers and I for one definitely think twice when I see a cover like the one that won the worst covers contest, because a bad cover design can easily mean that the editing and proofing are bad and the publisher simply isn't expecting that much from the book.