Both books came out at about the same time, which means that neither of the designers involved would have been able to find out about the other's cover, so neither had a chance to avert the coincidence.
By the way, if Murakami does win the Nobel, I'm going to hit somebody.
5 comments:
What's wrong with Murakami winning the Nobel? Don't think I'm a fan, I've only read one of his books, Norwegian Wood, and I don't really remember much of it (weird, I have a good memory for books... there was a love triangle, right?). But he has many devoted fans, so I just thought he wasn't my cup of tea. Is he really that bad?
I just don't think he's that great, or that important: it seems as though the Nobel should go to people with a real heft to their work, not a bunch of tired-out tics about jazz and cats and unconvincing female characters and surrealism.
Having said that, as much as his fiction leaves me cold, his book 'Underground', on the Sarin gas attacks, was actually really good.
That seems like a good summary of what his books are about (I've read his first novel too, but was so messy I supposed it wasn't fair to judge him on that. And there were cats and jazz, etc in that one too).
That's why there are exclusive license rights. I've had a few non-exclusive images licensed for book covers from my archive within the same year and three of them were book cover duplicates. Not that many people buy exclusive rights in order to save some money, but IMO it's well worth it. Having a duplicate cover can hurt author's reputation and sales.
A very good point: exclusive images or an image specifically photographed/created for that cover are always going to be preferable, I suspect.
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