HC Steals a Book Cover... And has been Resolved.

I've seen this sort of thing happen so regularly over the past decades that I've decided one of two things must be happening.

Either there is a Universal Consciousness and artists, like writers, tap into it more easily than your average bear, or --

All the heads of publishing art departments get together for lunch at least once a month and decide which "themes" and "looks" everybody is going to shoot for in the next batch of covers.

Winner buys lunch next time.

I'm leaning toward the latter.

I'm not really surprised by this, you see this all the time on flickr. Some people just get inspired and want to do their own version. However, there are a few rats who will just lift the original picture and make a few edits. : /

Nakhlasmoke said:

Not adding to the argument one way or another, just wanted to say that I thought the original cover of Spiderwork far superior to the imitation.

That's one talented artist there.

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Heh, I know. She has mad skillz.

Bartholomew said:

If my UF novel finds a market, I might request that they avoid showing my female MC's back on the cover.

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Just make sure your female MC is fully clothed and doesn't have any tatts.
(seriously, what is with the tattoos and butt shots?)

I'm glad to hear this. Legal resolutions are always costly and messy.

I'm guessing HC decided it wasn't worth the negative publicity. Which just goes to show: it's worthwhile making a fuss about these things.

AlishaS said:

The matter has been resloved about the two covers at least, no mention if the artist in question still plans to follow through with getting lawyer and what not...

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I'm not really sure if she would have a legal case, given that it wasn't her image, but an image heavily inspired by hers. It sucks, but legally I don't think the HC artist did anything wrong.

CheshireCat said:

Either there is a Universal Consciousness and artists, like writers, tap into it more easily than your average bear, or --

All the heads of publishing art departments get together for lunch at least once a month and decide which "themes" and "looks" everybody is going to shoot for in the next batch of covers.

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My vote's for Universal Consciousness. I've seen the same themes and color schemes pop up for book covers given to different designers. We supply them with some ideas, both verbal and visual, of what we have in mind, and they present us with their take on it. Sometimes it's similar to what we requested, sometimes it's not, but I'm always surprised to note when certain design elements start cropping up for sample covers from different designers.

And think of how many people start writing similar stories all at once. I mean, any time I see an agent talk about the common stories she's getting at the moment they are crazy things I'd never think of (mermaids, retold fairy tales, etc.).

I'm not sure what makes a lot of people write very similar stories all at the same time, but it definitely happens, and I can see that happening with art, too.

kaitie said:

And think of how many people start writing similar stories all at once. I mean, any time I see an agent talk about the common stories she's getting at the moment they are crazy things I'd never think of (mermaids, retold fairy tales, etc.).

I'm not sure what makes a lot of people write very similar stories all at the same time, but it definitely happens, and I can see that happening with art, too.

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I think this example is feeding off the literary world.

Paranormal/dark romance is popular, so artists begin drawing Gothic girls. I have been buying a diary for several years using these type of drawings.

It's not all that difficult to understand, really.

In any given group of "new" writers, you've got the majority who were kids and teens around the same time. As kids and teens, the majority were exposed to the same television shows, music, movies, popular books etc.

So you get a wave where XXX was popular when they were kids, so when they write a book for kids or teens, it's got the same sort of character / creature in it. BOOM... it's a trend.

The same kind of thing made the news several years ago with a particular name popping up out of nowhere to make one of the "hot" baby names. (Gage, IIRC). It was a mystery to "experts" like sociologists and the like, but when they asked a few of the parents who chose the name it was simple. There had been a television show that ran when they were kids and "Gage" was the most popular character; he was always called by his last name.

The mermaid trend falls at S. Meyer's feet, IMO. After Twilight, she said she wanted to write a book about mermaids / sirens, so you ended up with a wave of people who assumed this was her next project, which would likely be a best-seller because of her Twilight audience, so they wrote mermaids in hopes of riding the same popularity wave.

With bookcovers, it's generally more reactive than that. There's a given standard for what goes on most book covers in a genre, so the books are easy to identify on sight. Then something "big" comes along (Twilight, again) and the covers change. Instead of forlorn looking girls staring at guys, or graphics that depict a scene from a novel, you end up with a whole shelf's worth of black-background, simple image, consistent color-scheme books so that each stands a higher chance of attracting the readers of Twilight.

We do writing challenges in the critique group I'm in. Usually, these are based on a sentence. More than once we all wrote stories with the same ideas, but different execution.

We do have a collective conscious about these things...that's what makes a culture.

Toothpaste said:

I thought the quality of the original artwork was familiar, and I went to the artist's page. Sure enough she's the artist for a friend of mine's book coming out with Arthur Levine - "Above", check it out!

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Love the cover!!!

Mac is absolutely correct - this is a non-issue. Many cover artists, fi they aren't shooting their own artwork, get their stock photos from iStock or GettyImages. You pay for the copyright, get your permissions, and go to town - so it's highly likely that you'll artwork on another book.

This very thing happened to us with a cover. We'd searched high and low to make sure the artwork hadn't been used. Right after we submitted to our distributor for the catalog, someone found the same photo, even though our treatment was varied somewhat. Holy crap! we thought. It came down to the fact that we knew we had far better distribution and a marketing footprint, and the other book was going to appeal to a different audience, so we felt good to go.

I'm sure HC felt the same way - they have the larger footprint and believed the two covers wouldn't cross paths. That they changed it is very cool, and I feel it was classy of them to contact the cover designer and ask to purchase the artwork. Most will simply copy and use at will.

The short story is, it happens far more than you realize, even though we all take great pains to be original.

In this case we know the second publisher was specifically inspired by the first artist and had been in contact with her--I think that makes a difference in terms of the 'oh, total coincidence' explanation.

I'm not sure that the artist has a basis for any kind of legal claim, but the original publisher, who purchased the work and created a "trade dress" for the book, might. Here's a lengthy explanation of what "trade dress" means in reference to book covers.


The short version is: Visual impression created by the totality of all elements used in packaging or presenting a good or service for sale, and which gives the product a distinctive and recognizable appearance. A trade dress may acquire legal exclusivity as a type of trademark.

When my first book came out in the publishers catalog, we got a fancy legal letter from another publisher claiming that my book was in violation of trade dress rules and if we didn't change it they threatened legal action. Which might not have led anywhere but certainly would have held things up with my book.

While my publisher was much larger than the one who came after us, the other author was HUGE. The ironic thing (to me) was that my book was in a genre that was new to the other author at the time my book was proposed and contracted. The book cover in the catalog was essentially the same as the one I put on my proposal (at which time the competing book wasn't even in their publishers catalog, let alone released--that came 10 months later). In other words, no one involved in my book knew the other was in the works so there could have been no intentional copying of anything. Really, we could have made the argument that they had copied my original concept as my artwork was completed before the other. In the end we changed the cover to keep from creating any big problems.

In this case, especially because HC tried to commission that exact work for their cover, there would certainly be a basis for a trade dress action if the publisher decided to pursue it. (That wouldn't necessarily mean anything for the artist though if she had been duly paid for her original work.)