MBA Essay Help

Question

Find a business news article from this year using a source from the list below. Then follow the directions noted further below. 

Aljazeera Media http://www.aljazeera.com/business/

BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/

Bloomberg Businessweek* http://www.businessweek.com

The Economic Times http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business

The Economist* http://www.economist.com/

Financial Times* http://www.ft.com

The Fiscal Times http://thefiscaltimes.com

Forbes Magazine* http://www.forbes.com/home_usa/

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/business

The New York Times* http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/

The Tokyo Times http://www.tokyotimes.com/business/

The Wall Street Journal* http://www.wsj.com 

* These print publications are often available at local news/magazine stands.

After reading your article, write 450-500 words describing and analyzing the content of that article and post here, creating a new thread. Be sure to cite the article and provide the APA-style reference for it. Then respond to at least one other student posting, with a full paragraph of your own business analysis.

Answer

With Romance Novels Booming, Beefcake Sells, but It Does not Pay

The article describes Jason Aaron Baca, a forty two year old cover model for romance novels. The article begins on a light note by comparing him to popular actors such as Ryan Gosling and Tom cruise whose images have widely published in popular media. He is a sharp dresser who shows up for work in a khaki military jumpsuit fashion statement. Baca regularly goes to the gym as part of his preparation for the shoot. He even passes by the place before every cover shoot to improve his muscle’s appearance before joining photographers and directors on set. They give him directions while he keeps making adjustments to his pose to capture shots that are especially attractive to the majority of readers of romance novels.

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Interestingly, romance novels have a total annual sales of $1.08 Billion (Holson, 2016). The genre has a large number of writers through romance publishing sector is highly demanding not just for them but also for publishers. It is for this reason that this genre was amongst the first to adopt digital serialization. Its participants are highly creative and innovative, and this helps them to establish and develop growth. Owing to its popularity, funding is easily accessible for writers of this genre.

Meanwhile, publishers are not bothered by the monotony of having male models on most romance novel covers because they lead to higher sales than their female counterparts. The search for the perfect male model has been identified as a long and daunting process. Moreover, today’s readership has shifted to more explicit content, prompting publishers to search for the perfect male model who elicit sexual interest in readers. Thus, in this genre, the role of the cover is so crucial that it is directly related to the sales volumes of a novel.

Accordingly, the shooting itself is a delicate process that requires perfect facial gestures and body posture in efforts to convey the theme and message of the novel. An example of this portrayal is the book Saved by a Seal by Lindsay McKenna modeled by Mr. Baca. He assumes a crouching position to convey anticipation and suspense. Prior to its publication, there was a discussion on whether the cover should be blue or red. Finally, the cover designers settled for a subtle blend of blue and red illumination.

In another example of a cover model for romance novels, Pepe Toth from Hungary saw a photo of himself and his girlfriend on the cover of Jennifer Armentrout’s novel Obsidian (Holson, 2016). He recognized the photo as a stock picture they had taken three years earlier in Hungary and contacted the author. Armentrout invited the two to the United States where they took part in promoting the book alongside the author and her publisher. This modern-day identification of cover models with characters is being widely exploited in this romantic novels. It is for this reason that many fitness models become famous after being featured on the covers of best-selling novels.

In the meantime, Baca laments that the pay for his work as a cover model is quite low. This may be due to the emergence of self-publishing and alternative means of sourcing for cover models. To deal with this slowdown in the photo business, one fitness model, Jimmy Thomas, has started a convention that links models to their fans. He believes that this approach will eventually lead to better pay for cover models.

References

Holson, L. (2016). With Romance Novels Booming, Beefcake Sells,but It Doesn’t Pay. The New York Times, March 30, 2016.

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