Ursula Le Guin spoke about the white-washing of book covers at the BookAmerca expo. Overexoticizing occurs too: click white-washed cover link.

There is, in fact, a large audience for “black books” but they weren’t discovered until African American authors started self-publishing and selling their books on the subway and on the street and directly into schools. And, yet, the publishing industry still doesn’t seem to get it. Perhaps the whole “black books don’t sell” thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

And then there’s the fantasy writer who had to user her first initial and borrow her grandmother’s name to use as a middle initial since her publisher didn’t think that kids would accept a woman writing a book with a male protagonist, this woman of course being J. K. Rowling. If we go back a few decades, there’s James Tiptree, Jr. Likewise, I don’t know of any men writing Romance, though there are probably some, but who write using female pseudonysm