Robin Romm's Book Cover Look-a-Likes Discoveries

I don't have a book published yet, but I do get nervous when a story line starts to sound like mine. Not that anyone ripped me off, but if I've been beaten to an idea I don't want to be a "just like."

As to the blog post, I agree with most of the commenters (that's a first!) that convergence in the arts is all over the place. It's easy to see what someone wants to see. I doubt the Esquire graphic was thought up after seeing the book cover. It's easy to see how it developed on its own.

I think the author is being egotistical to think his cover is causing the number of Popsicle themed graphics out there during the American early summer. Maybe his next book cover with 'invent' a picture of flip flops on a beach?

Un-huh. This author has a serious problem.

I find it interesting how books out around the same time share a lot of similarities in their covers- both in their subject matter and in their designs (ie all the iterations off of the Twilight covers - which are genius, design wise). It's not always something that strikes you until you look for it. Personally, I'd be more worried or curious about a similar book cover over similar images in advertising and design.

I don't understand where that author extrapolated the idea that anything bearing similar content to their book cover must be inspired by it. What a very odd idea. That's like saying:
'oh look, my cover has a pretty orb...that magazine ad has a pretty orb too with the same color scheme...they must have seen my my book.'

I find it interesting how books out around the same time share a lot of similarities in their covers- both in their subject matter and in their designs

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This has always been true. When the catalog announcing my first book was released, we got a nastygram from another publisher using words like "Trade dress issue" claiming that my forthcoming book was a knockoff of their famous author's soon-to-be in the stores book (her book was to hit the shelves about 6 months before mine). The thing was, her cover was nearly identical (right down to the font) of the book proposal I'd submitted to the editor who acquired my book. My proposal was submitted several months before her book was in their catalog and there was no way in the world that I could have had any idea that 1) she even had a book on the same topic coming out and 2) what the cover of that book would look like.

Recently, Anne Voscamp's book "A Thousand Gifts" has been on the NY Times bestseller list. (It was released in Feb or March.) There's a novel coming out this summer that has a nearly identical cover (hands holding a nest with eggs in it). Personally, if I were the author of the novel, I'd be wanting a different cover. But I'm sure they were both in development at the same time and the one had nothing to do with the other. It happens. Always has, always will.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Something like this wonderful ink drawing. Nobody will have anything like it.

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I love the covers with those drawings. I'm glad they won an award, maybe it will encourage others. I like covers that do more than make a series look like a series, that add together to make something greater. Also those spine covers that, when put together on a shelf, make a connected image.
If nothing else, people who might not buy every book in a series, might, to complete the image.

Private Eye occasionally does a 'cover lookalikes' feature which shows two covers side by side. Usually it's just similar composition or theme, which I think is normal for two books about similar subjects, but occasionally it's been the exact same piece of stock art, just angled/coloured in a different way.

So, as a problem, it can exist.

Wow. I don't think popsicles on a blue background are unique enough to claim as look-alikes.