Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Similar Covers: You’re Not My Mother (Again)

There’s something about Prune Berge covers, or rather about the cover to her novel T’es pas ma mère (which literally means You’re Not My Mother). Two weeks ago, I featured the cover to the original French version of the book, which has at least five copycat covers. (To see them all, hop over to this “similar covers” post.) Then last week, I featured the cover to the Dutch translation, which has at least seven copycats. It turns out that the German translation has been published with two different covers and, yup, both have lookalikes...

In this first set, Du bist nicht meine Mutter (2005) is not an exact match for the other four (The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews [2007] by Joanna Russ, The Story of My Face [2002] by Kathy Page, Suffering: Understanding the Love of God [2005] by John Calvin and the album Alone [2005] by A Deeper Down). But you must admit that it looks pretty similar!



(On a completely separate note, doesn’t the John Calvin book look like a Scandinavian thriller? That’s what I assumed when I first saw it. But no, it’s a collection of writings by the father of Calvinism!)

In the second set, both book covers feature the same image (the other book is The Gravesayers by Sheree Fitch [2005]; Du bist nicht meine Mutter came out with this cover in 2002).


Weird, eh?

Edited to add:

I’d forgotten to mention pub dates, so I’ve added them in, based on what I could find on Amazon.

10 comments:

  1. That is strange. In the top set, they all even use the same color palette.

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  2. Unbelievable! All these similar covers could be made into a huge collage or mosaic.

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  3. At least the bottom set has different colours. Good finds!

    ~ Popin

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  4. My gosh, it really is amazing that there are just so many similar covers. I know I've wondered this before but I do wonder if the themes are similar as well. Are there really that few images?

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  5. Sheree Fitch is an NS writer, so that cover to me IS the gravesayers...do you know which one came first? What a shame that they so often get re-used...and that authors have so little (if any) say on what covers go on their books...

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  6. So similar covers run the gamut from American version to French and probably any version, I guess. It so surprising to me. And, as Kathy pointed out, the hair color is even the same, why not change that, at least?

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  7. That is pretty crazy! Whoever is in charge of picking covers for this book is seriously doing a bad job.

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  8. Ach due lieber!!! (Spelled wrong, I'm sure.)

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  9. Kathy, I know! I kinda feel sorry for Prune Berge, who can't seem to get a cover of her own for her book, no matter what language it's published in.

    Suko, I keep thinking it would be fun to put all of them on one page, like Sarah has done with her collection of hist fic copycat covers...

    Thanks, Popin! Glad to see you're blogging again!

    Martha, I don't think the world is lacking in stock images! And for the first lot of copycats, I'd have to say no, from the little I know about those books, the themes are not similar.

    Brogan, I put the pub dates in for you! As it turns out, The Gravesayers was published second.

    Amy @ The House of the Seven Tails, I presume each publisher didn't realize the image had been used before...

    Amy @ Amy Reads, in defense of Prune Berge's publishers, they were generally the first (or among the first) to use a particular cover image... I guess she's just unlucky!

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  10. Jenners, sorry I missed your comment. I meant to say, bless you! :)

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