“Cover deja vu”: stock photography repeats

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.

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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.

View full story on the Novelish blog for three examples of stock photography being repeated on book covers.