Culture Barnes & Noble suspends reissues of classics with 'diverse' covers - Apparently new covers with different skin tones aren't a selling point for classics.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/barnes-noble-diverse-editions-1.5453107

Barnes & Noble is withdrawing its planned Diverse Editions line, which featured 12 classic texts repackaged with new 'diverse' covers. The initiative was met with widespread criticism. (TBWA/Chiat/Day New York/Barnes & Noble)

Barnes & Noble is withdrawing a planned line of famous literature reissued with multicultural cover images that has been met with widespread criticism on social media.

"We acknowledge the voices who have expressed concerns about the Diverse Editions project at our Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue store and have decided to suspend the initiative," Barnes & Noble announced in a statement Wednesday.

The author Adriana Herrera had called the books, scheduled to be launched this week, "the classics in blackface."

"Diverse Editions," a joint project between Barnes & Noble and Penguin Random House, featured 12 texts, including Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz.

The text remains the same, but on the cover, major characters are depicted with dark-skinned illustrations by artists of "different ethnicities and backgrounds," according to Barnes & Noble.

"Absolute TONE-DEAF decision-making," Mexican-American writer David Bowles, a leading critic of American Dirt, tweeted about "Diverse Editions."

"Diverse Editions" was announced at a time when the publishing industry is already facing scrutiny over the novel American Dirt and its depiction of Mexican life and culture.

The decision also comes in February, which is Black History Month, an annual celebration of past and present achievement.

To much disbelief online, the organizers of "Diverse Editions" had said they used artificial intelligence in reviewing more than 100 older books and determining whether the race or ethnicity of a character is specifically stated. Few would argue that Alice from Alice in Wonderland or the title characters of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are fitting for a tribute to black history.

"They could have Googled, chosen a dozen books by actual Black authors that are classics & sent those out with fresh covers & a big event," author MIkki Kendall tweeted.

"Add in bringing in contemporary Black authors to discuss these works & the whole thing is a win. They didn't do the easy or logical thing."

'The covers are not a substitute for black voices or writers of colour, whose work and voices deserve to be heard,' Barnes & Noble acknowledged in a statement. (Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press)

In its statement Wednesday, Barnes & Noble acknowledged that the new covers were "not a substitute for black voices or writers of colour, whose work and voices deserve to be heard.

"The booksellers who championed this initiative did so convinced it would help drive engagement with these classic titles," according to the bookstore chain.

"It was a project inspired by our work with schools and was created in part to raise awareness and discussion during Black History Month, in which Barnes & Noble stores nationally will continue to highlight a wide selection of books to celebrate black history and great literature from writers of colour."

- - -

Looks like "diversity for diversity's sake" doesn't help sell books. Color me surprised.

 

[Pissmaster]

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Holy fuck, they gave Dorothy a pair of ruby Air Jordans

This is so fucking amazing.
They missed an opportunity not having Toto as a neglected rottweiler/pitbull mutt though

I can already envision the memes of that with KFC photoshopped into the basket.

I love it when woke morons show just how incredibly racist they are. Some woke retard thought that black people just could not relate to the cover enough unless the ruby slippers were changed to Air Jordans. They genuinely, honestly think of black people as all having the same personality and tastes, like they're a completely different species.

I hope this is how woke culture dies out, with huge businesses just cluelessly putting out the most outrageously racist shit imaginable because they kept hiring 20-something blue haired kids from California that can't shut the fuck up about diversity, but get visibly nervous when sat next to a black family at a restaurant.

By the way, if anyone here has access to actually get any copies of these, fucking grab them immediately because these might be some of the rarest cover variants of those books ever published.

 

[AMHOLIO]

Bruh dont some of these books have like, racist depictions in them? Like Peter Pan (or was that only the movie)? Even if you pretended the main characters were a different race youd still have like a bunch of negative stereotypes in the book. I understand lazy publishing greed, but this is such an extra fuckup.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

And we need this why? Barnes and Nobel could have reissued classics written by black authors but I guess pretending Romeo and Juliet were Muslim lesbians is easier. Wokeness is so fascinating as it deosnt even really care about "diversity" or "equality" just the illusion of those things so inevitably white liberals who define those terms stay at the top

The problem with that is there aren’t that many black authors with works in public domain. To my mind the blackest classical author I can think of is Pushkin. I’m not too knowledgeable about literature so maybe there are others, but even still the pickings have to be real slim.

 

[stuffandthings]

I think the reason that this crap existed in the first place was just low effort money, they could upsell old free public domain works that they already had queued up to print. The only cost was the shitty cover art that they obviously scrimped out on.

Promoting modern literature would probably earn them less.

Yup. I wonder how many classics written by or about black people would even be in the public domain? I'm going to guess that most black classics are still owned by someone's estate. You could have a giant checkerboard of alternating Othellos and Huck Finns, but that would be 'problematic' since whitey wrote them from whitey's perspective.

 

[Marco Fucko]

It's kind of fascinating to watch old retail wither away.

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

The art just looks so fucking bad. I don't even give a shit so much about the concept as the execution - it's like they got one F-tier artist off Deviantart to draw ALL the new covers. There's nothing interesting about them, it looks like fuckin' clip art.

EDIT: Wait what the fuck. They have two fucking versions of Frankenstein, one with no beard looking like a Soundcloud rapper, and the other with a beard looking like Juicy Smullet?

 

[LateNightMuffin]

"To much disbelief online, the organizers of "Diverse Editions" had said they used artificial intelligence in reviewing more than 100 older books and determining whether the race or ethnicity of a character is specifically stated."

Wait. You mean they "used artificial intelligence" instead of, say, _reading_ the books they were thinking about publishing?

 

[Stab You in the Back]

And we need this why? Barnes and Nobel could have reissued classics written by black authors but I guess pretending Romeo and Juliet were Muslim lesbians is easier. Wokeness is so fascinating as it deosnt even really care about "diversity" or "equality" just the illusion of those things so inevitably white liberals who define those terms stay at the top

The "Young Adult" section of Barnes & Noble is already 75% black. There is no shortage of black authors, just worthwhile black authors.

That said, these books are specifically designed to do two things: 1) push sales of public domain books for which B&N undoubtedly has higher margins for because they're published by B&N, and 2) to trick librarians into rebuying books they already own because they're now "diverse."

 

[Book Thief]

Just imagine the outcry if you were to do this kind of thing in reverse. I wouldn't be upset by this if it worked both ways, but alas...

 

[Sped Xing]

The real story here isn't "nothing is ever good enough for niggers."

What's going on is woketards are just as racist as the average KF poster, but they want desperately to prove otherwise, so they make a condescending, nonsensical effort to be inclusive, and shit a brick when they're trashed for it.


"I will save you, my negro brother! Here, read this public domain book that I put a laughable blackface picture on! You are finally home, uwu."

I rather prefer the people who are just honest about thinking blacks are subhuman.

 

[LetThemEatCake]

It's bizarrely akin the old blaxploitation movies. Except without the general pizazz and sense of humour. Those things were at least fun.

The problem with that is there aren’t that many black authors with works in public domain. To my mind the blackest classical author I can think of is Pushkin. I’m not too knowledgeable about literature so maybe there are others, but even still the pickings have to be real slim.

Nearest thing I can think of is Jean Rhys. She was about 1/4 Dominican, and is basically known for Wide Sargasso Sea which is beloved by woke librarians and teachers for its anti-colonialist attack on, and miserable 'deconstruction' of an actual classic novel by a white female writer, Charlotte Bronte, but her stuff won't be in public domain for a long time yet, surely.

I mean, soz blacks weren't writing anything worth reading in the literary vein in 19th century and before, but ffs. Colouring in the faces of white characters in great novels won't address historical inequities OR get non-readers reading. Maybe publish more works by unknown black authors if you're so exercised about the issue? Oh wait, that would cost way more than republishing public domain works that are famous already.

I concur with whoever said the only thing that'll get people who don't really read reading is to shove 'Harry Potter' on things. Sad, really.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

Timcast vlogged about this.

One Youtuber is very optimistic for one reason.

Cody Scheumann
Collectors are going crazy right now buying up all this garbage because in 20 years we will all be saying "remember back in the late 2010s when twitter was a thing and the people that used it were bat s*** crazy and companies thought it was a good idea to pander to them?" All this stuff will be super rare!

Btw, how the woke crowd will react if a black character on the cover of a book will be replaced by a latino or chinese character?

 

[Sped Xing]

"To Kill a Mockingbird" with a white tranny instead of a black man.


It would change the book, because no way the tranny isn't guilty of rape.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

"They could have Googled, chosen a dozen books by actual Black authors that are classics & sent those out with fresh covers & a big event," author MIkki Kendall tweeted.

No fucking shit. It's amazing how Barnes & Noble could be so incredibly tone-deaf when for many years the whole conversation about literature has been extremely open about the claims that there is plenty of nonwhite-created works that need more attention.

I have no doubt that the B&N execs decided on the same lazy strategy that a lot of twitterati have, let's just steal the creations of white people and glom pocs into them instead of promoting unique poc literature, as if that will convince any racists that black people are equally creative and expressive. I'm really glad there's a bunch of nonwhite people calling out this patronizing bullshit.

 

[Reverend]

No fucking shit. It's amazing how Barnes & Noble could be so incredibly tone-deaf when for many years the whole conversation about literature has been extremely open about the claims that there is plenty of nonwhite-created works that need more attention.

I have no doubt that the B&N execs decided on the same lazy strategy that a lot of twitterati have, let's just steal the creations of white people and glom pocs into them instead of promoting unique poc literature, as if that will convince any racists that black people are equally creative and expressive. I'm really glad there's a bunch of nonwhite people calling out this patronizing bullshit.

They did it because they'd actually have to PAY the black authors instead of Copy/Paste story with new cover and $0 in royalties due to Public Domain. Thinking any deeper than this is futile, this is a For Profit company with shareholders, they are in it to make $$$.

This is the same shit companies do during Gay Pride Month. Find the easiest, simplest, cheapest thing to turn 'gay' and use it for the whole month to earn them GayBux. Unlike the SJW's gays have money and are relatively good with it. Hence why companies go out of their way to attract gay people to their products.

Gay people are not all SJW's and not all SJW's are Gay.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

They did it because they'd actually have to PAY the black authors instead of Copy/Paste story with new cover and $0 in royalties due to Public Domain. Thinking any deeper than this is futile, this is a For Profit company with shareholders, they are in it to make $$$.

This is the same shit companies do during Gay Pride Month. Find the easiest, simplest, cheapest thing to turn 'gay' and use it for the whole month to earn them GayBux. Unlike the SJW's gays have money and are relatively good with it. Hence why companies go out of their way to attract gay people to their products.

Gay people are not all SJW's and not all SJW's are Gay.

You're absolutely right. Corporations like B&N are all over anything that gives them the appearance of being woke only so long as it costs them nothing. They want to look like they're supporting black authors but this doesn't extend to doing anything that might lead to those authors or their estates getting any kind of pay.

It's got to be especially important for a corporation that exists to sell a medium that is being wiped out by tablets and smartphones. Imagine how stingey Blockbuster video would be about supporting black filmmakers if they were still a big company today.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Is nobody gonna point out that Dorothy is wearing a fanny pack in 2020

Let's not comment on the fact that "black people" for these people mean "low class black Americans living in poor neighborhood" because that's all the Woke crowd knows about blacks. They don't know that Africa exists and that they have their own culture with books, movies, music, and art that has NOTHING to do with America.

 

[Nazbowlgang]

Comics are mainly a white past time

 

[NyQuilninja]

Let's comment on the fact that "black people" people mean "low class Americans living in poor neighborhoods" because that's all the blacks know about . They don't know their own culture. that has NOTHING to do with America not being woke enough

ftfy
and what does that have to do with the fanny pack?

 

[Pissmaster]

It's got to be especially important for a corporation that exists to sell a medium that is being wiped out by tablets and smartphones. Imagine how stingey Blockbuster video would be about supporting black filmmakers if they were still a big company today.

Imagine if Blockbuster was still around today, and they just hired a bunch of random Black Twitter celebs to do sweded versions of classic movies on the cheap, with like everything recorded on 5 year old Android phones in empty parking lots and in front of green screens

"Aaight, dis rite chea finna hit 88 mile'n hour, 'n' y'all niggaz gon' see some gangsta shit"