A recent Novelish post illustrates some of the dangers in using stock photographs for book covers.
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.
What’s your favorite book cover?
Large Print Rip Offs
The best rip off cover art I’ve ever seen come from the Linford Large Print Westerns. I have no idea why they haven’t been sued for blatantly copying movie scenes for their cover art.
I’ve seen many of these things and the cowboys depected on them are John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Randolph Scott, and even Gene Wilder from the movie Frisco Kid.
And these pictures don’t just kinda look like the real deal. The picture of Clint Eastwood is from one of his spaghetti westerns where he’s wearing the blanket, smoking the cigar, and doing the whole “Man with no name” thing. The Lee Van Cleef comes from the big gunfight at the end of For a Few Dollars More. I believe he’s even holding the pocketwatch on the cover of the book.
I’ve got a blog post from a while back with pictures if you want to see what they did to Harrison Ford as Han Solo.
Re:Large Print Rip Offs
You should be able to access this thread:
http://www.fantasybookspot.com/forum/viewtopic.php ?t=4254&highlight=cover+art
A range of samples and some informed comment.
Thread start[not me]:”I’m totally cribbing this from The Rap Sheet.”
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/