And the other thing is, back in the day, romance authors would have a bunch of pen names very often. Nora Roberts writes as Nora Roberts and also J.D. Robb. Jayne Ann Krentz has had like 2000 pen names but her main names are Jayne Ann Krentz, Jayne Castle, and Amanda Quick. Heather Graham writes as Shannon Drake.
For some of them, I believe this was a numbers game so they could publish more without competing against themselves (and, like, contracts with Silhouette and Harlequin and stuff where some authors weren't allowed to publish under their own names because of their contracts, that's something you could talk about for ages), but it was also about branding expectations.
Nora Roberts writes all kinds of romance. J.D. Robb writes futuristic science-fiction police novels with romantic elements. (They are kind of wild.)
Jayne Ann Krentz mostly writes romantic suspense type stuff, romantic contemporary. Jayne Castle writes futuristic/paranormal romance. Amanda Quick writes historical romance.
Heather Graham writes romantic suspense, some contemporary stuff, some paranormal. If I say darker romance, you're going to think like the booktok "dark romance" and that's not what I mean, but like darker themes. Murder, ghosts, etc. Shannon Drake writes historical romance.
This is about branding, so that a person could pick a book up and know from the author a general idea of what they were going to get.
There was also absolutely an expectation of changing a pen name if you wrote different age levels and that happens a lot less now!
Now, this not me picking on these books because there's nothing wrong with them and we all know that authors don't control covers but like.
Can you really tell me which one of these is adult and which one is YA?
I'll tell you because it brings me to my point - Chloe Brown is adult, Highly Suspicious is YA. But let's do a little hypothetical. You're 15, and your school library has Highly Suspicious. You read it and you like it, and the book mentions the author has other books! They're listed on one of the first pages. The book does not say they are adult books. (I've read this - I know this and can say it as a fact.) You order them because you like this author!
When they show up, they have significantly more sexual content than you were expecting. You're not scarred by this or anything, but was this what you were expecting when the book you read didn't have much more than kissing? Also, they're about adults. Did you have a good experience here?
Maybe, maybe not. But how would you tell without looking the book up? What is MEANT to differentiate them?
But what particularly bothers me is it's not just YA. It's middle grade too! Middle grade has always had illustrated covers, obviously, but this specific illustrated style feels different to me.
If this didn't say middle school, would you know this book is about eighth graders? Honestly, I personally already don't love the idea of a middle grade romcom, but people generally gave it good reviews but if this didn't say "middle school" on it would your first guess be that these are thirteen year olds (+one god)?
I have kind of a general pet peeve about middle grade book covers making their protagonists look older than they are and especially when it's a trend that often happens to Black and brown characters, but that's a rant for another day.
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