So I was thinking about my amazing find from yesterday in the context of what @JenReadsRomance has been talking about as well as the @99piorg episode from this week. With each reprinting. The book has gotten further away from its original clinch. Let’s look:

I’m not sure which of the edits to the original art came first, but I find the thong version to be the most fascinating of the two. I mean, talk about raising questions about historical accuracy!

The most well-known edited version is the one with the faux sticker heralding the book as “A Coast to a coast Best Seller”. This seems to be the one you can most often buy online.

Later in 1985 (near as I can tell), Avon abandons the art in favor of making Johanna Lindsey’s name HUGE. I haven’t seen this one in person, but all the images hint at a stepback- if you have this, I’d be curious to know if there is one!

The 2003 US reprint is a classic flower cover- what’s the book about? No one can tell, so no one has to know.

And then in 2011ish, we get the series of Lindsey reprints that only show the houses involved. Architectural romance, I guess? They’re all dreadfully boring, but this one really pulls out all the blah.

So in the 30+ years since Tender is the Storm was published, we’ve gone from “it is what it says on the tin”, to “oh, we didn’t mean to be THAT titillating”, to “obfuscate!”, to “here’s a house, isn’t it pretty?” They drained the sensuality out of Johanna Lindsey, of all people.

I get that times change, but at some point a decision was made to drain the cover of this book of all meaning. And it’s not hard to imagine that it was done out prudishness, not a desire to sell more books. If you rereleased this book with its original cover today-

It’d sell like gangbusters, and we all know it. But you can’t hint at that level of sexytimes if maybe someone’s nipping at the film or streaming rights, now can you?

Glad everyone's enjoying the thread! It's been a minute since I did one of these. If you want to read more ramblings of mine, they're over at https://romancehistory.com/ . Thanks!