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

I was prepared to say a bunch of things, but then I looked at the images. Um...pretty darn close. And I must say that she has some gorgeous self-pub covers.

In the comments it says HC approached the artist and tried to buy the original art. When the artist refused, the second cover... appeared.

Seems like a cut-and-dry case of theft, although I'm not sure what legally can be done about it (in terms of sueing HC etc). Don't know enough about law to comment.

Wowly shit! That's JUST WRONG!

In the comments, the author says:

"This is terrible. I just heard from Nathalia. Not only did she NOT sell them the art, but they approached her and tried to buy it, and she refused!"

That's scummy. We can't buy it, so we'll copy it!

ETA: wow I'm slow. It's been mentioned already.

How very odd.

Email the hell out of Harper Collins. If I'd known about this last month, I could have asked Jennifer Brehl about it at the Discworld convention. Makes me not want to sell anything to HC. The rot starts with Murdoch and percolates downward!

MacAllister said:

Naw. Sorry guys, I know this isn't going to be popular. She's got no case. You can't copyright an idea -- it's a classic set of visual motifs, it's VERY clearly a different artist and a different painting.

She doesn't have to like it, but it's not theft.

The laws determining what's plagiarism or theft in visual arts or in the garment industry are a fair bit different than those around written work, too. For example, you can take an off-the-shelf jacket, take it apart, redesign the pattern, and as long as you change 10% of the pattern elements it's perfectly legal to make your own knock-off products.

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Yeah. It sucks huge. But scums are allowed to be scums sometimes. I mean, come on...it's a classic motif, sure...but find more than 2 that are 'like' those covers. The google you pointed to show nothing like them. This isn't really a case of a classic motif. It's more a case of legal theft. She has no case. But the second artist has no moral fibre. That's worse than not having a case. LEGAL THEFT.

I think this YouTube video showing standard Urban Fantasy cover motifs from actual covers says it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxSwr130ptw

There will be no case. It isn't theft. I do hope it's great pub for the author and the artist. That will be their "win."

Well put MacAllister. I was a bit pissed off for the artist, but now it seems like it's just the law of the land when it comes to cover art. Still seems douchey though.

I didn't really expect that there'd be any legal basis for prosecution. But what's telling is that HC first approached the artist and tried to buy the cover. When she wouldn't sell it, they basically just said "Okay, fine, we'll just blatantly rip off your idea!" ...which is what they then did.

I'm sure there's no legal leg to stand on here, but it's still a crummy thing to do, and it's obvious they stole the idea from here because they tried to buy the idea first. When they couldn't get it directly by paying for it, the got it indirectly by stealing it.

The entire point of commercial covers is to make it easy, from several feet away, to identify the basic motifs and the genre of the book.

That's the whole point; they need to be predictable, they need to use a series of recognized visual motifs, better known to artists as iconography.

Sometimes an image is re-licensed, sometimes it's imitated, but this kind of thing is done all the time. Which is to say, whatever you think of the practice, Harper Collins isn't uniquely scummy among publishers.

MacAllister said:

I'm not trying to belabor the point -- but it's pretty harsh to start throwing words like "rip-off" or "steal" or "scum" when it's just kinda how the industry works.

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I don't think those words are too strong at all. This is not using iconography. It's taking an artist's specific image, deliberately copying it in terms of images, composition, even the almost exact same bird, and altering it just enough to (presumably) avoid a lawsuit.

They tried to buy the art, were rebuffed, and designed an almost identical cover. it's a rip-off, pure and simple.

I don't know the laws concerning visual art, but I do know how hard it is for a musician to successfully sue when somebody steals their melody and riffs, changes a few notes, and claims it's a different song. It's also a rip-off.

Granted, this has been going on for at least 30 years (Dragon and Rocket Ship, anyone?)

But many of the new urban fantasy and paranormal romance covers are so alike they actually repel me. I know I've passed up great reads, but when I browse bookstore shelves I catch myself thinking: 'Half-naked dude with tattoos, front view, seen from the chin-down. Camisole-wearing chick with tattoos, back view, seen from the chin-down. Angel of either gender. Bonus points if seen from chin-down, double bonus if there are also tattoos. Were-whatever of either gender, with no apparent shaving issues. Oh, look, an artifact or weapon that may or may not have anything to do with the plot. Gee, if all the covers are this similar, maybe the stories are too.'

I actually miss those horrible garish old Darrel K. Sweet covers from the 80's, because they made a vague attempt to illustrate something from the book, even if it was six degrees different and followed an art director's summary. I miss covers that showed views of sweeping sf&f landscapes, a la Mike Whelan. I even miss the bizarre abstracted covers of the old Ace books from the Sixties.

I have nightmares about my mms getting a standard modern UF genre cover, but I made sure it can't happen. It's epic fantasy, so they'll have to slap a dragon on it. And my protagonist has fur, so there's no place for tattoos.

The book covers are similar because the elements used in the art are widely used. I think the cover art that Mac and Ryan provided (posts 18 & 19) show how cover art is duplicated every all the time. Even in shopping for books, I have seen similar book coves.

If the publisher approached the artist then I would say this cover is similar because it is an imitation, not by coincidence. That doesn't make it illegal. But I reserve the right to consider it rather tawdry conduct.

I don't see any theft at all, nor anything scummy at all. There is no lifting of anything here.

That being said, I don't buy Harper Collins books until the company changes ownership.