Alright guys, this is a shot in the dark but: do any of you have any insight into YA book cover design and trends, marketing and/or publicity? Do you know anyone who does? Do you know someone who might have a kind of clue? I NEED YOU.
Here’s the deal: Chapter 2 of my thesis deals with tropism in YA book covers. (Remember year of the “girl in dress” or “half girl face”?) I’m trying to make a case as to why this happens with such frightening sameness in YA books. Chapter 3 deals with ways that digital marketing and publishing has effected the book industry, in particularly in YA.
I have searched my school’s sources, but the actual DATA behind these sciences is eluding
me. I’m not a marketing person. I don’t know how graphic design and marketing science works. But there has to be some of kind report on this stuff out there somewhere because there is a reason all these covers look the same and someone is keeping tight track of all these digital marketing trends. Someone. Somewhere.
Literally anything that you think would be useful would be helpful at this point. I’m in a research hole so deep, I’ve forgotten what sunlight looks like.
Comment away! Email away! Tweet away! Facebook away! …please?
Praise Santa because I’m finally home. I made it out of my penultimate semester as an undergrad alive. (Mostly.) Honestly, since I’ve gotten home I’ve mostly been sleeping around requisite holiday stuff.
semester had two very different goals. One was for my Writing BA, and that necessitated me writing at least 50 pages of original work. I wrote way over 50 before I even considered 
The English thesis, on the other hand, is still a massive work in progress. The goal for this last semester was to research things for it and then write the first chapter, and the goal for next semester is to write the last two chapters, defend it and present it. Not necessarily in that order, as I’ve learned, since my presentation is in the middle of freaking April and it’s assumed I’ll still be writing it then.
Female Assassin in YA Literature Showcases the Biggest Issues and Best Possible Subversions of YA’s Most Popular Tropes” and basically it’s about how so much of YA lit presents a supposedly empowering female main character and then takes away all her power and agency with a really creepy and terrible romance arc. Specifically, I looked at female assassin literature using Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers, Poison by Bridget Zinn, Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton and–of course–Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. If you want the fangirl version of my thesis, it’s that Throne of Glass is the only one that gets close to present a truly empowered female character while also presenting a plot that thoroughly subverts popular tropes that I’m sick and tired of seeing.
The origin of this thesis was me trying to figure out how I could just re-read ToG forever and this is what happened. I’m happy to say that it held up to my intense scrutiny (mostly), because some of them did not. I wrote a blog post about 
going to deal with marketing strategies for YA books, like cover trends, blurbing, etc, and how that factors in to commodification and tropes, and my third will tackle different publishing strategies as weapons for and against this war of commodification and tropeism. (While still talking about how amazing Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury and the Throne of Glass series are.)
My Life is a Notebook 