This ... this is why publishers shouldn't use stock photography for their covers

Wow, thanks.
(Runs off to search images.)

Oh. Just realised that won't work for me.
See, the image I'm thinking of isn't anywhere online but I want to see if it is -- somewhere. It's from a calender I once photographed. So I have the image on my hard drive and I want to see if anyone has it up on the internet anywhere. Is it possible to do such a search?
(Sorry for the derail, folks. It just happened to come up.)

Yup. Bring up the folder with your image file (it helps if you resize the window so you can see your internet browser beneath) then click and drag the file onto the same Google search site.
It should work in the same way. I hope

Hey, it worked! Found it! Thanks a mill. I never knew this was possible.
(End of derail)

It's a pretty recent function as far as I know. Glad I could help

Alessandra Kelley said:

It may not be pride. Getty Images may require credit and citation somewhere as part of its terms of use.

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Some stock image providers will allow you to use the image for free, even commercially, so long as you cite them as the source somewhere, usually on the cover or the copyright page.



The same image coming up time and again is nothing new. Private Eye have a regular feature called 'book-a-likes' where they compare covers.

I have seen similar covers, but never the same cover. It does seem a bit lazy.

The bigger issue, for me at least, is how relevant the cover is to the story. I hate picking up a book and the MC on the cover looks nothing like how they are described. I can only imagine how frustrating that would be for an author.

wow, joseph o connor is pretty big. dont know the rest. might just send him a mail....

eta. Wait Theodore Fontane? wft? he deserves better than this

A friend of mine showed me a mailing she had gotten from a local politician, which included photographs of "locals" and the nice things they said about the politician.

She was using it as a bookmark in an anthology of The Onion articles -- marking the page of a story using the exact same stock photo as one of the "local" constituents, only in the Onion article his quote was something obscene.

I don't think being forever associated with an off-color joke in The Onion was exactly what the politician had in mind with his quotes from "local constituents".

This just become timely for me when I spotted the guys from the cover of my second book on the cover of an upcoming December release in the same genre though different publisher. (Well obviously in the same genre. Pictures of guys kissing only tend to show up on m/m romances. )

The base image of the two guys is the same, but the covers are very different, the picture is cropped differently, it's flipped, one guy has different hair, the colour theme is different, the details are different. If it hadn't been my cover, but had just been of a book I'd read I probably wouldn't even have spotted it (and I remember covers very well) but of course I've looked at my cover a lot. It interested me a lot that the cover artists could take the same picture and create such distinct covers from them.

(see my blog post from 13th November to see them side by side if you like.)

Becky Black said:

(see my blog post from 13th November to see them side by side if you like.)

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Wow, that shows exactly what can be done with the same image. This is when stock art works best, when the artist knows how to use it and manipulate it into something else.

rugcat said:

Good Lord.

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It happened with one of mine. The main running figure was, with the addition of a top hat, used on a the cover of a friend of mine and on a couple of others besides; it happens.

Alessandra Kelley said:

And John Crowley is a deeply respected literary fantasy author, one of Neil Gaiman's influences.

Jane Austen is kind of a biggie too.

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Really?




D dint seen jane, have to admit)

eta, oh right the Chinese edition. Kinda suits that novel mind.