Monday, August 12, 2019

Does Hair Color Matter? by Cindy Flores Martinez





Whenever I need to create a book cover for a new story, I struggle to find the ideal photo with a model whose hair color is like my heroine’s hair color. I’m facing the same situation with my latest book cover. So, the experience made me start thinking about the topic of hair color and book covers.

The heroine in my soon-to-be-published story has a Spanish last name. So did the heroine in my last story. But the photo that I chose for my last book cover created strong opinions. I was told that the model wasn’t right because her hair was brown. People sent me alternative photos with models who had black hair. I ended up choosing a photo that showed only legs!

For those who don’t know, I’m Latina. I’m mostly Native American and Spanish. Here’s a picture that I took today of my own hair for this blog post.





As you can see, it's brown. Because of it, I've decided to choose a photo for my book cover with a brunette model to represent my Latina heroine. Will it matter?

What do you think? Does the model’s hair color on a book cover affect your opinion of the heroine in the story?

10 comments:

  1. First off your hair beautiful! Secondly, there will always be people who will disagree loudly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cindy, I agree with Kimberly. Your hair color is beautiful. And it's difficult to match a hair color to the hero/heroine in a book. I've also used arms and legs when I couldn't find the right match.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much. And it's so true about finding the right models to match the heroes and heroines in our stories. It's a challenge.

      Delete
  3. Your hair is beautiful. I love the curls.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cindy, I've met many people with Spanish names whose hair color isn't black or dark brown but very much the same as yours. And sometimes it's really hard to find the perfect photo that represents the characters we have in our heads.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with the others who have stated their opinion here! Your hair color is beautiful! However, I will say this - my opinion! I've had this pet peeve for years about book covers. It really bothers me when I have the image of a character in my head after an author has described him/her and then the image on the cover is totally different! It REALLY bugs me! Hair color and length is something over the years that has bothered me. For instance, many times the heroine has had "short spiky blonde hair" and the cover image is long, brown hair! It just blows it for me! Same with long, red hair and then the cover image is short, black hair! Let's at least be close!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much. And you're so right about when the model on the book cover looks nothing like the way she's described in the story. Even though we want to create our own mental image of the characters in a story, the cover means a lot.

      Delete
  6. I must say that as long as the description of the character and the cover pic are close, I am good. And since I have been dying my hair since I was a teen, I don't worry about ethnicity and color. Your question also speaks to why I usually prefer covers without heads or only landscapes lol!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Cindy, Stereotypes can be very powerful. So the assumption that a Spanish character must have dark hair may be the most common but Spanish people can be blond too! Genetics are funny things and of course there is always a visit to the hairdresser. :-) Peronally when I choose a cover model--I do a survery of readers opinons and focus on the model's expression. To me that's what makes a cover model successful --do people wonder about her?

    ReplyDelete