I only thought of this today, and just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that authors aren't credited at all. Their names would still be inside the book, in the publishing/copyright information and so on, and there'd still be a list of other books by the same writer for anyone who really enjoyed their work and wanted to see what else they'd done. But what if that was the only place on a book that the author's name appeared, and it wasn't on the jacket cover or in any especially prominent position?
The reason I'm suggesting this is that I think so often these days, books are promoted in relation to who wrote them more than they are in relation to what they're actually about. Particularly with how many books are promoted with a celebrity's name on it (which has often been written by a ghost writer anyway), I think this makes it harder for books that aren't by well-known names to get noticed. This feels unfair on new authors, and as a reader like they're focussing on the wrong bit – I think most authors would prefer that more people bought, read and enjoyed their books, irrespective of whether they know who wrote them.
I think it could also have an impact on minimising things like unconscious racism and sexism. It would mean readers would be less likely to discriminate against women, or people with foreign-sounding names, or anything like that (I have no idea how much that happens already, to be fair – for all I know it could be a non-issue, but just an idea.)
by georgemillman
25 Comments
Oh boy
I would find this annoying. There are authors I really like. I want to read more or all of their books. I do not want to always have to search lists or look at the cover page to find who wrote it, if I am in say a used book store. As far as e-books, well those will tell you the author whether you look at the cover or not.
The publishing industry doesn’t exist to be as fair as possible. It exists to make money. The fact that a book is written by a famous or popular author helps the book sell, which helps the publisher make money. And if the publisher didn’t make money, then they wouldn’t be able to afford to publish books by unknown authors.
If a book is by my favorite author, I want to know that. I don’t want that information hidden away.
Also, how would books be organized at the bookstore? By title? That means each book in a series could be on a totally different shelf, and it would be hard to hunt them down if, say, you want the next book in a series but don’t know what it’s called.
Are you suggesting books be displayed alphabetically by Title alone?
What a waste of time it would be if you needed to open every book to check their author. Books can have similar titles. Also, what a pain it would be to sort your library when you can’t see the author at first glance. There are people like me who enjoy picking up random books but others might feel tricked by the lack of forefront information, or don’t want to make the effort. It would be a very good way to push away readers. In the end, it’s an industry. Publishers want to sell, not to yell ‘surprise!’ at their customers.
Authors would lose their fucking minds and fight this tooth and nail. Authors care about sales above all else and this would cut into their sales, so it’d be viewed as intolerable.
Assuming that this is feasible, I am not sure it would be very beneficial. I personally like to choose books based on who the author is because it usually guarantees a certain level of quality in the writing. For example, I recently bought a book by one of my favorite writers. I only noticed the book because I recognized the author’s name and remembered I had liked a previous book, so I picked this one even though I hadn’t heard of it before. If I hadn’t found this book, I likely would have left the bookstore without having purchased anything.
In an ideal world, the readers would pick books by authors they don’t know just because they are feeling adventurous or because they would like to read a more diverse set of books. However, most people are only adventurous to a certain extent. I personally try to give other authors a chance, but I always come back to a few favorites that are basically my source for ‘comfort reading’ material. If it was harder for me to find books by those authors, then it would make me less likely to read, it wouldn’t do much to encourage me to diversify my reading as the whole activity would feel like a chore.
Kitt Williams had books where the titles didn’t appear on the cover, so why not.
God, that’s the worst idea I’ve heard today. No thank you.
Big nope. I enjoy certain authors. They’ve proven their ability to entertain me. It’s not about their race or their sex it’s just about the fact that they write books that I like. I don’t always know when they have new books come out so sometimes when I’m browsing books online or in a store I see an author’s name pop out it’s the first notice I have that they have a new book out.
Also, why should an author get more attention just because they were kind of tricked into someone picking up their book. I think the better judge of their talent is they were able to write a book that was so well received people who would not normally buy their work or by work by someone like them have been convinced to pick up their book.
Lol no but for some authors I find it very off putting like when you read a YA book and the author is so obviously the main character or some books written by older men that are very gritty and sensual and then somehow make me feel gross after I see the author pic. But thats just me and I might be biased.
I am a minority writer, and your idea has quite a lot of problems.
1. Quality is heavily dependent on author. It matters.
2. Hiding author names, assuming it worked, means people looking for books from their favorite unknown author wouldn’t find them as easily.
3.The worst problem is it would make the in-store experience less useful and it would fail utterly everywhere else. You would have to change the way the entire industry works top to bottom.
4. It is tough to get our names out there and be seen, but zero authors are *entitled* to be seen. Hurting every established author is a non-starter on every level. Is it fun being a brand in order to become well known? Nope. Is it how the planet works? Yes.
Sure, we as a species should help where we can to increase the richness of voices in various arts. You can go out and start a website right now dedicated to marginalized authors you want to promote. That is a great place to start and I recommend it. A word of warning, if you don’t make sure your recommendations are for high quality books, the site will fail. It cannot just be “unknown or minority.” It needs to be “hidden gems worth reading.”
This is a homogenized take. People that buy books based on recognition of a known author are not ‘taking away’ from ‘unknown’ authors because the subject is hardly the only reason someone would choose a specific book. Most readers want to experience a specific author’s style or the subject-by-way-of-them. The prominent feature of any Pynchon novel is that it’s Pynchon. How would you market any of his books more concisely than ‘by Thomas Pynchon’? This conveys more than a subject (if you could even nail that down).
I do think it’s an interesting idea, but it’s not likely to gain traction. People want a reliable read, and one of the most reliable indicators people have that they’ll like a book is that they have already read other books by the same author. If we don’t have that, what do we judge a book by? A title? A cover image that may or may not accurately represent the content? *Blurbs*? Publishers? I don’t see publishers giving up the real estate of author names, and if they did, I don’t see audiences not finding another way to privilege a particular set of books.
Here’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a practical implementation of this idea:
I worked for a short while at Barnes & Noble (major U.S. brick-and-mortar bookstore chain). We had an endcap full of “blind date books,” which meant we wrapped the book in brown paper and wrote a basic description of the genre, audience, and plot on the wrapping. (We also photocopied the bar code and taped it onto the book so we could actually scan the book at the registers.)
This meant that on a copy of The Hunger Games, neither the title nor the author’s name were visible to shoppers. They would just see something like “YA dystopia: teenagers fight to the death in an annual tournament.” Lessons in Chemistry would be labeled as something like “adult fiction: woman chemist defies 1960s cultural norms and eventually becomes cooking show host.”
The premise alone sold the books. A small percentage of customers loved that. The customers who didn’t like it just shopped as if the endcap wasn’t there.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: this could be a good opt-in idea at a very small scale. But in order to be successful, readers would have to opt in, and booksellers would have to accept that most readers don’t want this kind of shopping experience.
You make some valid points.
But I disagree with the concept. Perhaps in certain cases and genres the author’s name is irrelevant, because popular genres become repetitive and formulaic after a little while. But in most cases people attach to an author’s style, their voice and their story. And I am all for democratizing art and expression, but most authors need years of experience to become good. Sometimes you want to know new talent and others you just want a solid narrative you know will be well written. Either way you have a right to know what you pick up.
As for celebrity books: most of those are memoirs or personal stories. And their whole point is that they are the story of that particular celeb. And most of the times them being written by ghost writers doesn’t affect the result as long as the story is authentic.
Also books are expensive. And they are expensive to publish. Publishing houses invest in an author with a recognized name enough money and resources than not putting their name on the cover, or not marketing a book as So and So’s next best seller would be madness.
Oh god no. Half the time people only remember the author’s name and not the title of the book. How are they going to find the book in your alternate universe?
My library has “blind date with a book” events wheee they wrap up a book, give you some details on the topic, but no title or author. You know everything once you open the book, but otherwise you’re going in blind.
I will sometimes grab one with the commitment to finish it regardless. Hasn’t really worked out great yet, but I do hope to find a new author I love this way.
People with feminine or foreign-sounding names figured out how to get around this issue long, long ago–by using pen names. Believe it or not the author doesn’t have to put their legal name on the front of the book. If you see an author using initials and a last name, feel free to look them up and see what their full name is.
New authors can and do get noticed all the time, how do you think they turn into big names to begin with? In 2005, no one had any idea who Brandon Sanderson was when his first book Elantris was published. 2 years ago he set Kickstarter records with $41 million in funding for 4 books.
It’s also worth noting that publishers largely fund new authors from the success of their stable of Big Names. If they didn’t have reliable top earners they wouldn’t be able to sign nearly as many authors as they do now.
Why not just organize them by having a list of applicable labels from TV Tropes dot com instead? And also, publishers should have to publish all submissions. And everything should be in comic sans font
This would turn every bookstore into the incipient bloodbath of the Dan Flash’s skit for I think you should leave
Is this a joke?
Why? Yes, I read books by X because they’re by X but I also avoid books by Larry Correia because they’re by Larry Correia. Not telling me who wrote the book is just hiding so much information from me before I start it.
stephen king and dean koontz wouldnt have sold nearly as much as they have
I’m often annoyed when I see book covers where the author’s name is significantly (or even a little for that matter) bigger than the title. And not just for big names like King