Melville House Books

A cover that soon won't exist ... of course, it never should have in the first place

Following up on an earlier Moby story: The folks at Bloomsbury may keep making the same disgusting error over and over, but at least they’ve improved on their response time to public outcry about it: A story in Publishers Weekly by John A. Sellers reports that, within days of being villified around the internet for running yet another cover featuring a white model on a book about a black protagonist — in this instance, the book in question is Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass — the company has “apologized for the cover and released a statement saying that it would stop supplying copies of Magic Under Glass, Dolamore’s debut novel, and that books with a new jacket would be made ‘available shortly.’â€

Actually, they didn’t apologize too hard — here’s the company’s statement in its entirety:

Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.

Hmm … shouldn’t someone from the company — you know, the publisher or someone — take a little more responsibility and explain how this keeps happening?

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.