I feel a little cheated by this. I don't exactly know why, maybe because I think that's cheap of them, like they didn't care enough about the book to give it an original cover, or maybe the cover artist was too lazy. Either way, I don't like it.
To me, a cover says a lot about a book. The better, gorgeous, obviously spent lots of time thinking about covers, tell me the publisher has a lot of faith in the book. They know they can spend a lot of money designing a cover because they know they will definitely get the money back in sales. It also tells me how much the artist liked the book because they obviously spent more time trying to make it great. So when I see covers being reused, it isn't saying anything good to me. This just makes me sad, especially for the author. I've talked to a few authors before about their books and know that it very much upsets them when the cover didn't have any extra thoughts put into it.
Has anyone else noticed the reused covers? Are you bugged by it as well?
The cover of The Bastard King looks incredibly similar to the cover of Souleaters, too.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason I can think of to do such blatant rips of covers like that is to attract people who already read books with a similar cover. But sadly, all it does to me is look like a hack job, like somebody couldn't be bothered to stand on originality and had to rely on a couple of cheap gimmicks to bring people to the book. It's rarely impressive.
I see this often with ebooks and then my first thought is oh that book then I realize nope not that book then I'm just sad face
ReplyDeleteI really get annoyed by this too. A cover is something I recognise a book by. I want it to be something original :\
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't immediately blame the publisher... Especially if the similarities come from different international markets.
ReplyDeleteI usually get annoyed, but sometimes it's also interesting to see how one stock image can be used and reused in different - but still similar - ways.