Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Similar Covers: A Bevy of Skirts...

A couple of months ago, Alea at Pop Culture Junkie posted a lookalike post about the similar compositions of the covers for Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz, Be With You by Takuji Ichikawa and You Know Where to Find Me by Rachel Cohn. Then, several weeks ago, I found another cover using the same image as Deadly Little Secret, which I emailed to Alea so she could update her post (this was The First Desire by Nancy Reisman). And then I found another one (Delivering Doctor Amelia by Dan Shapiro). At this point I emailed Alea again and asked her if she’d mind if I wrote my own post about these covers (which she obviously didn’t). And then I found another very similar cover (Seek the Living by Ashley Warlick). And then another (The Windmill by Stephanie Gertler)...




The interesting thing is that these covers are for quite different genres: Delivering Doctor Amelia is nonfiction; Deadly Little Secret is a paranormal YA romance, The First Desire is historical fiction, The Windmill is contemporary fiction and Seek the Living is literary fiction. (Genre classification is according to Amazon.) Which cover works the best, in your opinion? (I think my favourites are the last two, actually.) Has anyone else spotted similar covers?

Edited to add:
Less than 20 minutes after this post went live, I found a sixth cover that matches the second set: Oystercatchers by Susan Fletcher, which I inserted above. According to Amazon, this novel is also contemporary fiction.

Edited again to add:
I found three more, which I inserted in the second row above: A Village Affair by Joanna Trollope, La cruz de San Andrés by Camilo José Cela and the Japanese translation of The Proposing Tree: A Love Story by James F. Twyman.

17 comments:

  1. It's insane seeing these all together! I cannot believe it! Love it!

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  2. Alea, check back, I've already found a sixth cover to match the last set! Thanks for sharing my enthusiasm for these posts!

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  3. Fun post. It's interesting that they're for different genres.

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  4. Haha that's so great! It's a little unfortunate, how popular some stock photos are. Makes it a little disconcerting/laughable when you find lookalikes... :)

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  5. Wow! You found some really good ones. That's just crazy!

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  6. Similar covers seems to be everywhere.

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  7. Kathy, I thought so too. Some of them don't really seem to match their genre or their title though (particularly the nonfiction one)! A few of these books have alternate covers too.

    Steph Su, I agree. I don't think I'd be too happy if I was one of these authors!

    Thanks, Ti!

    Serena, I must admit I've found lots of other ones! (Did I mention I'm obsessed?)

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  8. Except the photos in the second set are all different (if similar), whereas they're the exact same photo in the first set.

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  9. That's unbelieveable! You have a great eye for this. It's interesting that some books seem to have such perfect covers and you call tell much thought was put into and then these: they just look so slapped on when you see them like this.

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  10. I love these posts about similar (sometimes identical) cover images.

    I haven't caught any myself (yet)

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  11. Do you think so, Anonymous Child? I actually think they are using the exact same photo in the three bottom ones too, except the colours have been changed and each is cropped differently. (Notice how the hand with the bracelet, the overlapping feet and the way the skirt is blowing look the same. I'm almost 100% sure it's the same photo, in fact.) Unfortunately, I don't have any of these books, so I can't check for sure.

    Thanks so much, Mo! Seven contests? Wow!

    Tara, I spend way too much time on the Internet looking at book covers... But yeah, I agree with you, none of these seem particularly original now!

    Dawn, keep your eyes peeled, they're definitely out there!

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  12. Isn't it interesting to see how often publishers reuse the same photo! I have The First Desire (as yet unread, of course), but the rest are all new to me.

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  13. it makes such a lovely collage...all the covers together. someone else was doing a similar post about legs and feet on book covers. i'm all about the cover...i'm so visual.

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  14. I love these types of posts. It's so interesting to see such similar covers lined up together. Art like this seems to come in trends, doesn't it?

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  15. I don't know why I love these posts so much but I do! Thank you!

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  16. They look like they could be part of a series or something. Very neat covers nonetheless.

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  17. Danielle, and all these books were published within a five-year period, from 2003 to 2008.

    Oh, Natalie, you don't happen to remember who did the post on legs and feet on book covers? I'd love to see it!

    Thanks, Wendy, Jenners and Ladytink!

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