Cover deja vu: The Dangers of Stock Photography
Go into any bookstore and you’ll see photos on covers everywhere. I’m not sure whether publishers think photography sells books better or they’re just too cheap to pay an artist, but it seems to be a growing trend in cover design.
Most of the time, I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, I don’t want to see artwork on covers disappear, but variety is good.
The thing is, when a publisher buys a photo, they don’t get exclusive rights to it unless they commission the photo shoot themselves (which is rare) - meaning anyone can come along and pay to use the same image, including other cover designers.
That isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it does create a feeling of déjà vu when you come across one of these “repeats” - it’s almost like glimpsing a character from some past book come to haunt the pages of your new one. It’s also interesting to see how different the covers came out when their designers used the same starting point.
- Please Note: Instead of copying the actual images, which I don’t have the rights to, I display several screenshots of the photos as they’re shown on GettyImages.com. Click on any of them to view the photo on Getty’s site, which includes a larger preview and licensing information.
Two photo-cover examples
I’m going to start by showing two popular books that use stock photography on their covers. These ones haven’t been “copied” anywhere… yet.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road won the Pulitzer prize and was selected by Oprah’s book club. The tone is changed and some of the color gone, but it’s more or less the same.
New Moon
Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romances have resided near the top of children’s bestseller lists for a while now. See how they flipped and rotated the picture and completely added the extra petal?
Cover Repeats
Here’s where things get a little interesting.
Long Night Dance and The Custodian of Paradise
Little differences like the color (or lack of it), the composition of the image, and the choice of fonts make all the difference here. Neither cover used more than a small section of the original photo:
Little, Big and Madame Zee
In Little, Big it’s merged with another picture on top while Madame Zee removes the background entirely. They’re both sepia-toned, though the original picture was colorless:
Black Out, The World at Night, and Maquis
Here are not two but three covers with the same image. I haven’t been able to locate the original photo it came from.
Discussion
- What do you think of photography in book covers, compared to art or something else? Do you have a preference?
- For the covers that use the same image, which design is your favorite?
- Did I miss anything? If you’ve come across two books with the same image that aren’t listed here, I’d love to add them.
39 Comments, Comment or Ping
bookjess
How on earth did you find those? O.o
Jun 17th, 2007
Thorn
bookjess: Started with noticing one in a bookstore, and after that I did a bit of searching.
Stirrdup: Thanks for letting me know! :)
Jun 17th, 2007
Gabriel
Maybe the price is too high for an exclusive rights-managed license (on Getty Images) that’s why they tend to go for the cheaper royalty-free ones.
Now I’m wondering… how much time do they spend in coming up with a design for a book cover? The authors surely spent a lot of time writing their books.
If the music industry can make unique album covers, I’m sure the book publishers can produce varied book covers too.
Jun 17th, 2007
Nikola
Nice text. Just note: you do have rights to copy (small versions of) actual images, under fair use doctrine. Screenshot of a web page which includes the image is a work derived from the image (even worse - there are web page layout, browser buttons etc, which are also copyrighted) and so you wouldn’t have right to post them if not for fair use anyway.
Jun 17th, 2007
Observer
(If people started deleting that inane Stirrdup spam, I’m pretty sure the world would be a slightly better place. They don’t care about your site; all they do is grab stuff from popular sites like digg.com and reddit, in a lame attempt to get hits on their own crappy site. Leaches.)
Jun 18th, 2007
Michael
Kinda nice to see that plagerism doesn’t just extend to text…..
Jun 18th, 2007
Anonymous
I’ve noticed others in the bookstore as well.
Jun 18th, 2007
Levi
Who cares????
Is this the book snob equivalent of not Hollywood’s not wearing the same dress twice?
Jun 18th, 2007
Thorn
Observer - I haven’t seen Stirrdup around before, but thanks for letting me know. I deleted the comment.
Annoymous - I don’t suppose you remember which ones? :)
Levi - You’re right, it isn’t that important (and I said as much in my post) - but it’s still kind of interesting, at least to me.
Jun 18th, 2007
Just me
People are going to do what they want,It worked for them,I think get a camera go out take a little time and be a little creative,I dont think you can change how people do things. OH WELL. Some one should take a chill pill, ITS NOT YOUR BOOK COVER.
Jun 18th, 2007
tetragrammon
i feel like that happens because the artist or photographer is out trying to sell their images, and it happens to be that two or more people decide to use them.
Jun 18th, 2007
Hugh | A Politically Incorrect Entrepreneur
Now that is some detective work!
Jun 18th, 2007
Brian
I use plenty of stock photography in my day job (web designer), and I always wonder if some of the models in the pictures ever stumble across themselves on our “About Us” page.
Jun 18th, 2007
Mr_Bill
Very informative. I appreciate you putting this together and sharing this information.
Jun 18th, 2007
Lynn
I’ve noticed this far more often with books using classic images - old paintings and the like. This was an interesting post. I think it’s fun to see how publishers can make the same image look different. What drives me nuts is seeing original images that are clearly derivitative (a la every historical novel of the last five years having the same kind of picture of a headless woman on its front as “The Other Boleyn Girl”.)
Jun 18th, 2007
~ender
I’ve got a beef with *bad* photography merges. Most recenly on Harry Turtledove’s _Drive to the East_ and _Return Engagement_. I really wish they would’ve paid an artist to take those as starting points, and do them with correct lighting.
Jun 19th, 2007
timoni
I don’t see this as so much daunting as an excellent example of what two people can make out of the same raw materials (sometimes with strikingly different results). Stock photography repeats are everywhere. People usually don’t notice. *shrug* Nice detective work, though!
Jun 19th, 2007
Joseph Maguire
Iam a designer,
You have exposed zero. Honestly those images are probably Royalty free. If their not I am sure getty is about ready to sue to get some cash. The authors would have had to pay to stop someone else from using the image. This happens everywhere. Hire a photographer if you think your book needs to be unique. Thats why photography good photography is really expensive… and do you know how much it costs to control images for certain markets especially lower quality images? its a lot and even if you do it you have to do it for a time period.The book covers design work isnt of question try to stay on topic.
Joe
Jun 19th, 2007
C Tobias
This is what happens when publishers are too cheap or too hurried to spend the money on original (or at least rights-managed) photography. It seems that publishers are wanting to spend less and less on cover photography (and illustration as well) but demanding their covers tand out in the marketplace. It doesn’t compute. The pool of decent RF images is limited. It may seem like it is endless, but if you are choosy it is slim pickin’s. Note: it is possible to obtain exclusive rights to a rights managed stock image, but the publisher has to be willing to fork over the additional dough to ensure that. Usually they are not.
Jun 19th, 2007
Axu
I’m annoyed by a similar feature in the world of sound. The same samples get reused in many movies and computer games.
The two samples I hate hearing most are the water-dripping-in-sewers as in Quake I and the sounds the crocodiles made in Ultima Online. The crocodile sound is often associated with lots of different animals as well as alien life forms. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think the crocodile sample might have been in Quake too.
I’m sure those samples were used somewhere even before those two games, but those games are the first I remember them from personally.
Jun 20th, 2007
acidic
@Gabriel
“Maybe the price is too high for an exclusive rights-managed license (on Getty Images) that’s why they tend to go for the cheaper royalty-free ones.”
Click on the links to Getty, and you’ll see that none of these images are offered as Royalty-Free. With the exception of the first image (which is Rights-Ready), they are all Rights-Managed images.
@Joseph Maguire
“Honestly those images are probably Royalty free. If their not I am sure getty is about ready to sue to get some cash. The authors would have had to pay to stop someone else from using the image.”
As a designer, you should know that just because an image is Rights-Managed does not mean that Getty (or any other stock distributor) cannot license the same image to other clients. If the book publishers really cared about this, they would have ponied up the extra money and purchased an Exclusive license. Most buyers just take these risks to save money.
All in all, it probably doesn’t make a difference anyways, as these book cover uses manipulate the original photos to some degree, and most won’t even realize that the same photo is used multiple times (unless of course the books are on display right next to each other!).
Jun 20th, 2007
marie
I point you to this:
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2006/05/when-covers-are-two-of-kind.html
my fave pair is the Walter Mosley/ Ken Follet covers.
Jun 20th, 2007
Joseph Maguire
Yes of course exclusive licenses is what i was referring too it costs way too much. thats why you… ( BOOK INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS :) should pay for originals with a model with a license signed preferably :) and a sick photographer and get the rights for it right off the bat. It’ll help your advertising/your uniqueness, and most likely your sales because as much as everyone loves Getty their images aren’t better than originals from a great photographer. It’s like they say you get what you pay for… that being said you can get a hell of a good deal on an up and coming photographer. You all know this. And if you don’t you should learn to know whats out there before selling your clients on something because your too inexperienced to shop around. Sadly a lot of these covers are done in house at publishing companies where they do it to a budget and don’t care about the artistry. And to that I say if your an established author fight to pay for a good creative lead / art director… A good one will fight for quality over budget, because at the end of the day their name may not be on the cover but its on the cover.
Jun 20th, 2007
Gabriel
acidic said: (Wednesday 20 June, 2007 )
@Gabriel
“Maybe the price is too high for an exclusive rights-managed license (on Getty Images) that’s why they tend to go for the cheaper royalty-free ones.â€
Click on the links to Getty, and you’ll see that none of these images are offered as Royalty-Free. With the exception of the first image (which is Rights-Ready), they are all Rights-Managed images.
Response:
I included “exclusive” when I used the term rights-managed. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography#Overview
#3. You must choose a Rights-managed license if you want exclusive use of an image. The photographer would not be allowed to sell the image to anyone else if exclusivity is part of the license. Not all Rights-managed licenses are exclusive, that must be stipulated in the agreement.
I thought Getty’s definition of Royalty-Free was this:
1. Pay a one-time fee to use the image multiple times for multiple purposes (with limits).
Jun 20th, 2007
Thorn
Joseph Maguire: Just to clarify, I never said I “exposed” anything with this post, and I don’t really feel that having repeated covers is that bad - it’s just somewhat interesting to see what they did.
marie: Thanks so much for showing me that! I didn’t think anyone else had done something like this. I’ll update my original post with a link when I can.
Jun 21st, 2007
Zahid
Lovely take on stock photography. Guess, in this age of fast food where technology arrives yesterday, it’s but evident that people are using quicker means of finishing a work. And for this, a price has to be paid - lack of originality. Are we inheriting a copycat world?
Aug 28th, 2007
Maximus
I would like to see a continuation of the topic
Dec 20th, 2007
Reply to “Cover deja vu: The Dangers of Stock Photography”