If It's Pink, Will They Buy It? Trends in the Book Publishing Industry

Have you noticed the abundance of books written by female authors that feature pink colored covers? Did you know that they're not just all light, "chick lit"? Pink book covers, for sometime, have been the identifying feature of so-called "chick lit" or beach reads, and is now being utilized by the publishing industry to help sell even heavier fiction written by women. The question is why.

The answer to that question would be having seen firsthand that chick lit flies off the shelves in bookstores and libraries, the publishing industry is adopting the pink cover technique to help trick the chick lit audience into purchasing other non-stereotypical chick lit. Unsurprisingly, not all authors are happy with this practice that tends to trivialize their work and lump them in with beach reads.

However, the name of the publishing game is to sell, sell, sell, and in an industry that is slumping, if trickery is what it takes to get sales, then that's the risk their willing to take.

Interestingly, Diane Shipley of The Guardian contents that eventually we'll get bored by the mass of homogenous pink covered books, and we'll see a backlash. Are we so sure of that? It has never seemed to hurt the romance novels, sci-books, or westerns, which feature nearly identical covers that fans of those genre can easily pick out and identify as something fun that interests them. So it seems more likely that if there is to be a backlash to the pink books, it will be because the publishing industry is using deceptive means to manipulate people into buying books that do not fit their preconceived notions of what the pink cover signifies. Readers are likely to be disappointed when what they thought was lighter, escapist, fun reading turns out to be something heavier and thought-provoking.

Interestingly, it has been suggested that women are drawn to the color pink because of the development of evolutionary preferences for reddish colored things like fruit and healthy-looking faces. So despite the deception, it is possible that women may still instinctively be drawn to the pink covers.