Sunday, June 17, 2007

Cover Art Expose at Novelish.com

I really, really, really need to be asleep, but I couldn't resist a quick note to share this fascinating post about duplicate cover art at Novelish.com. Seems stock photograph has its downsides, and one of those downsides is prominently on display right now, with side-by-side images of various novels with some...err...familiar-looking images on the front!

It's definitely worth a read purely for entertainment value, but it raises larger issues as well. Are these publishers getting sloppy, or is it okay to duplicate cover art? Does the association with one book help to sell a later book that uses a slightly altered version of the same photograph? (And if so, might some of these duplications be calculated?) As authors, how do we feel about stock photography that might be recycled again and again becoming the "image" of our books?

It's a topic we could explore all night, but I'm going to keep it brief for tonight in hopes that some others will weigh in

1 comment:

Barb Matijevich said...

I think it's a difficult question since so many of us still only dream of having a big publishing house take us on. If a smaller one took us on and then had smaller resources to devote to art, would it be a deal breaker? Would we find ourselves hoping the other book faded into obscurity so that our books would be the REAL book?

Having said that, I used original photography and design for the cover of MY book and the process wasn't that expensive. I mean, I took the photo myself and then my good friend did the design. I STILL think it's beautiful. Of course, since it is my book and self published, I didn't have to have a zillion meetings with the art team to finalize the Design By Committee, either.

Very thought-provoking question,
Barb