Controversy Over Anne Of Green Gables Cover Is Way Overblown, And That's A Great Sign For Indie Publishing
from the publishing-vanity dept
You may have caught wind of an online uproar today surrounding an edition of Anne Of Green Gables. If you're not familiar, it's a set of Canadian stories published in 1908 about a charming, precocious, freckled, red-headed orphan girl, and beloved by a lot of people. As with many things that people warmly remember from their childhoods, its legion of fans fiercely defends its integrity—so you can imagine how they reacted when a new edition appeared on Amazon with a cover depicting the titular character in a way that is quite faithful to modern audience expectations, but not so faithful to the text:
People are appalled, they're outraged, they call it disgusting—a sign of our shallow times where art is warped by corporate pandering. But really, the whole thing is a bit of a misunderstanding, which seems to have been sparked by an NPR "round-up" style column with a bunch of brief news snippets. What a lot of people failed to realize before running with the story (or chose not to emphasize) is that Anne Of Green Gables is public domain, and this edition was published independently through Amazon's CreateSpace. So, all of this broad outrage has really been sparked by one anonymous person using an independent publishing platform. The opinion that the cover choice is stupid seems perfectly legitimate (couldn't it at least be a sexy redhead and not completely betray the text?) but the reaction is a tempest in a teapot. There are tons of editions of the book on Amazon, self-published and otherwise, as is almost always the case with popular public domain works. There's really no conclusion to be drawn from this new edition, other than "some person out there didn't actually read the book," or possibly "gentlemen prefer blondes."
But there is something worth drawing from the controversy that has emerged: there's no difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing in the eyes of the average consumer. They simply don't notice anymore. While this is best demonstrated by the popularity of some self-published books, sitting right alongside books from big authors and big publishing houses in the Amazon listings, it's also demonstrated by a controversy like this, where the public considers one self-published public domain edition to be every bit as representative of "the world of publishing" as one of the major house's "classic" lineups. Can you imagine, even ten years ago, people getting worked up about what would have still been called vanity publishing?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: anne of green gables, copyright, cover photos, public domain, self publishing
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Hmm..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Hmm..
I'm not saying terrible self-published work doesn't still get eye-rolls sometimes—some people seem to be going out of their way to make it obvious that something is truly an act of vanity publishing—but by and large, people seem to have stopped paying much attention to whether or not something is self published, and judge it by the content instead (or, more often than not, the cover—but hey, they were never gonna stop doing that!)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Think of the already over-sexualised kids!
/s
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But wait there's more...
http://www.innovationpei.com/index.php3?number=1038593&lang=E
Which is owned jointly by the Province of Prince Edward Island and the L. M. Montgomery estate
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But wait there's more...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But wait there's more...
Seriously, that would be like ... I don't know, banning the phrase 'space marine.' Just ludicrous to even think about!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: But wait there's more...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But wait there's more...
http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-267518760/guarding-a-cultural-icon-concurrent-intellec tual
Irony Alert: It appears the article is behind a paywall, but there's a good chunk of the beginning made available, and there seems to be a free 1-day subscription too.
--Bob.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But wait there's more...
If someone placed a photo of a redhead model on the book cover there is NOTHING that that Canadian Authority could do since the model is most definitely not Anne, and even if bore a 99.9% resemblance to Anne would still be unenforceable since Anne was a character. Oh and nothing of the rest of the Authorities so called powers are enforceable outside of Canada (and even inside it's dubious they can).
As for using the blonde - who cares. Actually two things come to mind.
1. The publisher understands marketing perfectly well and that certain pictures are more beneficial to sales than others. ie: Blondes sell more than redheads [though I prefer redheads over blondes]
2. the bleaching of red hair works!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But wait there's more...
That website is rather like a cartoon character that has just run off the edge of a cliff - but hasn't yet looked down!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But wait there's more...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Because it works for marketing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But wait there's more...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Embrace change (or it will crush you)
I absolutely adore taking old stuff like that and changing the setting. All I need now is an AmericanDad/Macbeth variant and an AvP/RomeoAndJuliet one and I could die happy :-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Embrace change (or it will crush you)
Here's the cover already
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Embrace change (or it will crush you)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Embrace change (or it will crush you)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anne of green gables
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A Better Illustration
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/winslow-homer/fresh-air-1878
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A Better Illustration
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I, AM, CANADIAN.
I think it is because she isn't, like, drinking a beer, eh!
Now take off, eh! You hoser! ;)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Anne is one of those characters that a lot of readers identified with, or admired, because (I gather) she was plain, and somewhat insecure about her appearance, but also precocious and irrepressible. She's also 11 years old at the beginning of the novels. I can see why people who have loved that character since childhood are put off by the mere suggestion that she's actually a screen-ready blonde woman with come-hither-round-the-back-of-the-barn eyes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
For some really offensive covers...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: For some really offensive covers...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://postimage.org/image/u61sz12lr/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Self-published books in 2013
It's become super-common, and nowadays a vanity press does NOT mean a crap book. Who knew?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Public Domain Scammers and Amazon
(*) Which nineteenth-and-early twentieth-century books generally did not, so you can't just use the original.
Suppose you are teaching Anne of Green Gables in a school. In that case, you need to buy, say, thirty copies so that each student can have one, and, and so that you can say, "Okay, gang, open your books to page 76, where Anne says, blah, blah, blah, and what do you think she means by it?" Given the kind of students you have, you cannot expect them to read e-texts on-line and write out lists of questions and comments. The paperback book is well-suited to applying controlled pressure to make students learn when they would prefer not to. You basically want some kind of printed edition, but, beyond that, it doesn't matter which.
Well, Amazon has decided that it doesn't want to give this kind of business to, say, Viking Penguin, but prefers to steer the business to someone who will use their print-on-demand system, and that is reflected in the recommendation engine. Amazon's thinking is that, on an order of thirty books, they can quote a reasonably competitive price. The result is that someone who doesn't read any books at all sets up to produce editions of, say, a thousand public-domain books commonly used in the schools. This person, who is in effect, a kind of Moron in a Hurry, posts a book every five minutes, and literally doesn't give himself time to think. He has to chose a picture for each book, and hence he chooses these purely idiotic pictures.
If you will recall, something similar happened with e-books a while back, and Amazon responded by pulling in all the Gutenberg/HathiTrust e-texts and making them free on the Kindle, to drive the scammers out.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090717/1559425587.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles /20120310/19034718067/authors-guild-boss-e-book-price-fixing-allegations-but-brick-and-mortar.shtml
The problem is that they can't do that very well with a paper book. The printing, and the paper, and the shipping have to cost something, and there has to be a profit on it, and it is difficult to settle the matter thus directly, because it might amount to unfair competition. What Amazon might be able to do would be to give Gutenberg Project a grant to produce "paperback print-off-ready" editions, freely available to all, with suitable covers. They would then charge for "printing services," with charges explicitly based on the amount of paper and ink required, the way a print-shop charges. However, they would also try to encourage schools to buy suitable printers, capable of generating paperbacks. Ideally, the teacher would cross the hall, run the machine, and return with an armful of brightly colored, well-constructed, paperbacks with Gutenberg Project printed on the spine.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]