Your Cover Fortune

I had some Chinese food recently, and as usual, my fortune wasn’t so much a fortune as a vague statement of possible fact. But I do have a fortune for you writers of the category:

Should your book be published in September from Silhouette, duplication may be in the cover.

Exhibit A: September 2006’s A Little Change of Plans by Jen Safrey:

image

Exhibit B:

September 2008’s The Daddy Verdict by Karen Rose Smith:

image

Anyone else got “one of these things is just like the other?” stuck in their heads?

Thanks to Awesome Librarian Janine for the links.

Categorized:

The Link-O-Lator

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  1. ev says:

    Well, at least they changed to color of her shirt, although after being preggers for 2 years plus, I don’t think I would be smiling!!

  2. Iasmin says:

    Do they think we’ll not notice things like this? Feh.

  3. robinb says:

    Hilarity!  Francine Pascal meets Silhouette Special Edition.  What are the oddds that Jessica and Elizabeth, who have each dyed their hair the exact same shade of brown, would meet and get impregnanted by the exact same man?  One lives in a wonderful house with beautiful windows, and the other lives on her sister’s patio……

  4. Silver James says:

    Ah, man…..that’s just….*snorfle*

  5. robinjn says:

    And it’s a piss poor Photoshop masking job too. I don’t know who did it, but the guy has a white halo all around his head (it’s especially bad between his face and the chair) and it’s really obvious how they changed the table/vase. They cropped part of her chair out in the futile attempt to hide that hey, it’s not LIKE the chair they shopped in.

    Yo! Sihlouette! I could do better than this and I’m unemployed at the moment!

  6. Oh. My. Gawd.

    No one noticed THAT in the art department?  Eeeeeek!

    Anyone else think her fingers are unnaturally loooooooong and slender??  That’s even scarier!

  7. Theresa Meyers says:

    They also moved everything over to the right, just slightly.  Does anyone ever wonder if recycling cover art contributes to the assumption by the masses that all romances are just the same?

  8. Bonnie says:

    They also moved everything over to the right, just slightly.  Does anyone ever wonder if recycling cover art contributes to the assumption by the masses that all romances are just the same?

    Yep.  Not to mention cheap and careless.  That’s just so tacky.

  9. Lorelie says:

    after being preggers for 2 years plus, I don’t think I would be smiling!!

    No, no, she’s pregnant *again*.  Ya see, her and baby daddy hooked up the first time around, but as everyone knows it’s a bad idea to get married only because you’re pregnant.  So they split.  But things were pretty bumpin’ and there were some late night booty calls after tot number 1 went to sleep, and next thing you know. . .

    So here they are again but this time Will. Be. Different.  ‘Cause they’re in love.  Plus she read some Dr. Phil books.

  10. I think that guy in the blue shirt is playing around on his woman!!!  Women?

  11. Suze says:

    Holy.  I can see a new employee being sent to the stock images to choose a cover for a new book, seeing this, and saying “Perfect!”.

    What I can’t see is the library of stock images NOT having a “this image was last used for this publication on this date” kind of note on it, to prevent alert readers from noticing too much.

    Wouldn’t a publishing monolith have some kind of policy about frequency of use?  Or maybe they do, and it’s a bad one.

  12. WendyC says:

    Oh man, that’s just sad. Do they really not have records to prevent things like this happening?

    So who thinks that in September 2010 there’ll be another poor author with the same cover on their book? (although maybe they’ll change the guy’s shirt colour this time and remove that halo surrounding him!)

  13. joykenn says:

    Hey, what about the models, what about the artist?  Do they get paid twice.  Betcha not!  Boy, these guys are cheap.  I’m not buying any of these books these days cause they are all beginning to sound the same and I’ll blow my book budget entirely on “junk food” reading.  I want a nice meaty stew instead of jello.  Yeah, its like jello—sweet, synthetic tasting and over too fast. The slam-bam-thankyou mam of romance reading.

  14. Jennie says:

    It reminds me of those side by side puzzle pictures where you’re supposed to find the 10 differences between the two pictures.

    My word is mass55—does that mean the cover has/will be mass produced 55 times?

  15. Marsha says:

    Reduce, reuse, recycle!

  16. kalafudra says:

    Secret twins!

    My thoughts exactly!

    You know, those twin studies they conducted, where the twins end up with partners eerily alike? Well, these four just found each other.

  17. This is very funny!  My word is few19…they apparently only have a few stock pictures.

  18. Oh, the poor authors!  We should take up a collection and buy Harlequin some new stock pictures.

  19. katiebabs says:

    Maybe the Daddy Verdict cover is just showing the twin brother and sister from A Little Change of Plans? *snort*
    That is too funny.

  20. Wow. That is unfortunate for the authors but HQ and SIL aren’t the only pubs to have been caught recycling covers…I seem to recall something similar being pointed out on this site before. I don’t know how this happens. I just hope it’s the exception rather than the norm. No one I know has had their covers recycled (thank goodness!) and I’m hoping that it was just an unfortunate slip on the part of the art dept.

  21. robinjn says:

    I don’t know how this could be an accidental slip up of the art department. If they didn’t know they were doing a repeat, why try using all their Photoshop skillz (such as they are) to make it look different? Different background, different table, different colored shirt.

    If they didn’t know it needed to be changed so it wouldn’t be quite so obvious, why change it?

    Oh, and is it only me who is somehow profoundly bothered by the phrase “Dads in Progress”? In progress to what? From where? Are they a faulty system that must be updated? A sloppy construction project that needs to be fixed?

  22. dangrgirl says:

    That some good Photoshopping. Should I stick Seinfeld’s head in there, looking through the window of Exhibit A?

  23. rebyj says:

    They’re just getting lazy.
    To me, I would think it sells less books because if I were in the store looking to purchase, I’d see a familiar cover and immediately assume I’ve already read it and move on to an original cover.

  24. If they’re gonna reuse cover art, maybe they could pick something that doesn’t give me the freaking willies. That woman’s smile? Creepy. I keep thinking it’s a pod in her belly.

    *shudder*

  25. Shae says:

    So who thinks that in September 2010 there’ll be another poor author with the same cover on their book?

    Bored at work and did a quick and dirty shop of the picture, lol – http://pics.livejournal.com/lezlishae/pic/0022x0k7

    I amuse myself. 😛

  26. Teddypig says:

    Next they can use this for the cover of Just Like Mama Taught Me: The Bristol Palin Story

  27. Suze says:

    Yeah, its like jello—sweet, synthetic tasting and over too fast. The slam-bam-thankyou mam of romance reading.

    Heh.  I refer to Presents as being like jellybeans.  Munch munch munch, whoops! They’re gone!  Sweet, enjoyable, easily forgettable, and really shouldn’t form the foundation of a diet.  (By which I mean what you eat, not a weight-loss program.)

    We should take up a collection and buy Harlequin some new stock pictures.

    Dude!  They already get WAY too much of my disposable income.

  28. Suze says:

    Next they can use this for the cover of Just Like Mama Taught Me: The Bristol Palin Story

    Or the cover of the indefinitely-suspended book on Christian child-rearing by Britney & Jamie-Lynn’s mom.  Tee hee.

  29. Teddypig says:

    Next they can use this for the cover of Just Like Mama Taught Me: The Bristol Palin Story

    Or the cover of the indefinitely-suspended book on Christian child-rearing by Britney & Jamie-Lynn’s mom.  Tee hee.

    Oh I heard of that one…
    Hit Me Baby One More Time

  30. I’m WTFing more over the title of “The Daddy Verdict.”  Was he sentenced to fatherhood as like, community service or something?  Is “The Daddy Verdict” something that happens in family court, and then they seize your bank accounts and wages?

    Come on Harlequin, what are you guys thinking sometimes?

  31. CherylPangolin says:

    I’m just wondering when nascent bald spots became part of the image of the ideal baby daddy?

  32. Eunice says:

    Jennifer>
    My first thought on “The Daddy Verdict” is “Paternity Test.” Not very romantic.

  33. FallFromGrace says:

    decision33…

    I’m thinking any of the previous 32 would have been better.

  34. Kathy says:

    *SHAE*-Tooo damn funny.  Can you do anything else with the same people.  I need some amusement.  hahahahahahaha.  You are good.

  35. Now that I think about it, the first title isn’t all that much better, either.  “A Little Change Of Plans,” as in, “I wasn’t PLANNING on marrying you, but now that you’re knocked up, you wanna just go for it?”  That’s kind of bleak.

  36. Shae says:

    *SHAE*-Tooo damn funny.  Can you do anything else with the same people.  I need some amusement.  hahahahahahaha.  You are good.

    I could, but now am home from work and working of crafts (yays!). I can link to you a random thing I was doing a few months ago. I noticed my sims (the sims 2 pc game, that is) could be easily made into Ellora’s Cave style covers – so I did a whole bunch of them. You can click them to see the full cover. 😛

    http://pics.livejournal.com/lezlishae/gallery/0003pr0x?page=1

  37. Esri Rose says:

    Shae: GREAT work! Remind me to have you make up my next pen name.

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