Sextuplets! Or, How to Avoid Embarrassing Book Cover Doppelgangers

Fingerprints. Snowflakes. DNA. That's how unique you want your book's cover image to be, right? Why would you want to copy anyone else? Why would you want your book mistaken for someone else's?

In the wonderful world of indie-press and self-pub, low-budget and home-made covers abound. Some are shockingly bad, but as I've discovered during my weekly Kindle Romance Cover reviews, I have to admit the quality is rapidly improving.

But quality aside, the way the indie-press/self-pub world goes about gleaning images from the internet at large appears to be creating a slightly bigger problem. Let me explain.

A few weeks back I noticed a particular image used on two separate books published within a week of each other. Identical twins! 

This had me wondering. If the exact same image could crop up on two books within a week, how many other times had the same image been used?

The answer (from what I could find, just digging through Google Images), was a little startling.

SEXTUPLETS!

That's right. Here are six separate book covers, all published at some point using the EXACT, same image.

(Granted, at least one of these titles is now published using a different image - maybe they caught on?)

SO WHAT?

Okay, you think, So what? So what if other books have the same cover? But... what if that's not the only place your lovely book cover image has been used on the internet? Again, a simple Google search shows that the above image can be found illustrating:

• A blog post entitled, "Is Your Sexual Desire Normal?"
• An addiction article, "Sex and Sobriety: Drinking the Poison, Waiting for the Other Person to Die.
• A website article on WhyWeSuffer.com, "When Sexual Desire Covers Up Self-Sabotage"

And just in case we haven't caught onto the theme here, we have the image with 'Sex Addiction' plastered all over it. Nice.

So yeah.  Now your 'smexy romance' is associated with sex addiction articles. Not quite so smart, and not so sexy after all?

AVOID

So, how to avoid the Wore The Same Dress to the Ball mistake?

There are no guarantees, mistakes can always creep in. With the proliferation of images on the internet there is no way to ensure that no one uses your cover image ever ever. 

But a few things to try, and will at least ensure your use of the image is unique:

• Enlist a reputable cover artist who does original work and uses exclusive images
• Ask for exclusive rights on the photograph used for your cover
• Design your own, don't use stock images
• Please, use that little Google image search, lovely people, and check before you use a picture. It might save you a little embarrassment. And perhaps a few copyright lawsuits!

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UPDATE - 10th May 2013

One week on, and you guessed it. I found ANOTHER ONE...Seven and counting.

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UPDATE - 17th June 2013

Just spotted yet another hapless author who's got which picture on their cover? You guessed it...

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UPDATE - 18th June 2013

Did another image search just for kicks (when did this turn into my latest hobby?!) and found...a few more. ELEVEN and counting, folks! 

As well the image used in a few other places:

An album cover:

...and a 'Christian Sexuality' video:

Stay tuned...you can bet there will be more!

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UPDATE - 24 June 2013

That's right folks...it just never ends. SEVENTEEN books, people. -={ 17 }=-

(Okay, have listed this book already above, but it is a different design!)

And in other languages...

Are there NO more pictures in the ENTIRE WORLD?

But this might explain at least one of these covers. YOURS (and many others')...for only $25:

o_O

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UPDATE - 24 June 2013

Now, this is technically a series, so not sure if it's fair to count these as three separate books, but by golly they ARE and I WILL. That's now TWENTY books, people. -={ 20 }=-

Tilting the image a bit to change the body language? Interesting...

Done a little photoshopping to change the heights, have we? So sneaky...

And even here they've changed it just a little to make her more level with him. SAME PICTURE, folks!

('Everything' except a unique cover photo, it seems...)

Keep your eyes peeled for more - you just know this won't stop here, don't you?

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UPDATE - 22 January 2017 

Thought it was about time to (gently) scour the interwebs for any recent editions to my hall of shame.

Ah, here's one...(nice use of barbed wire)

Surely there aren't more...oh, I tell a lie...

Oops, and one more...

And another (oh, the irony..."first sight"..)

This one's making me a little blue...

And a foreign book...thank you Harper Collins, for this original image. 

By my count that's now -={ 26 }=- books with this cover. *sigh*

The Adventure of the Mystery Artist (an unknown Sherlock thriller!)

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Homles, ca. 1930

I recently blogged about how I came to the sinking realisation that my Pinterest activities were actually infringing the copyrights of others. As a result, I'm working on becoming 'UnPinteresting' - or at least using social media sites such as Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest in a slightly more copyright-friendly way. Of course, I'm really hoping it means that I'll eventually get to be best buddies with some of the incredible photographers out there, and they'll then be falling over themselves to give me their photographs for free. But that'd just be the cherry on top.

I have a problem though. All this taking the high road stuff isn't exactly easy. Some of the images I'd pinned to my boards were...incredible. I loved them. Still love them. But they were sometimes a billion-layers-deep repinned/reblogged/reTumblred on the internet. I could just sit there for hours just clicking back and back through the history of one pinned image, desperate to find its source. The worst-case scenario would be hitting a dead-end. A page that was no longer there. Or someone who actually saved the picture from somewhere else, and uploaded it themselves without reference to the source.

Original Artist - where are you?!

That's when I started using Google's very cool image searching capabilities, and got all Sherlock Holmes-y on the problem (see? Mr Rathbone figures in here somehow). Finding the source of these images was actually rather elementary!

Did you know that you can search images on Google by using an image? Yes. I mean, search the internet USING an image. How cool is that? Even better, you don't need to actually upload an image into Google for it to search with. You can search Google images with just the URL (web address) of an image. Genius. (and at any point, if Google wish to provide me with cash sums as commission for selling their services, I'm open to that.)

So...how does it work?

Just so we're clear, I'm not here to insult anyone's intelligence, and if you have this whole Google image search thing down pat already, feel free to move on and maybe read some of my other posts (like when I got all down on love, or pondered about brains). But I know that some of us like to have a bit of step-by-step to make life easier.

Here's how it works for me on Pinterest:

STEP 1: Find the image you want to search with and right-click (sorry, Mac folks, you're on your own here) and look on the little menu for the words, 'Copy image URL'. Click on this.

STEP 2: Go to Google and click on the Images search at the top:

STEP 3: Click on the little camera icon in the Google Image Search box

STEP 4: Paste the image URL into the pop-up search box and click 'Search by Image'

STEP 5: The results will show all the places Google can find that same image on the internet. Scan through this list, looking for source websites that look more 'official' than Pinterest or non-professional Tumblr accounts.

I often find that most serious photographers have proper websites, or pro Flickr accounts with a detailed profile. With this particular photo, I quickly spotted this search result on the second page:

Going through to the Flickr account, I could see that it was a Pro account, it had a lot of testimonials, as well as many other photographs of a similar style and subject matter. From what I can tell, this is the account of the original photographer, Irene Anton. And what did I see just under the banner on her profile page?

You read it right. If I'd re-pinned the image, I would have expressly gone against the wishes of the photographer. And, look at that. She's not completely against being contacted for their use! Win/win.

Some closing thoughts.

Okay, so this is hard work. But any research is just that - hard work. If you're in search of beautiful, evocative, story-inspiring images, isn't it always better to dig a little deeper? Scratch past the surface into something more substantial? The way I see it, the benefits outweigh the cost of time.

1. I now know this photographer's name. 
2. I can follow them on Flickr without violating their copyright.
3. I can find all the OTHER photographs they have taken (if you like one, maybe you will like others too!)
4. That picture that was almost perfect, but not quite? What if it was part of a longer shoot and there are other versions to choose from?
5. It's honest, and it's fair.
6. I feel so much better.

So, go out there, search savvy and reap the rewards!

'What one man can invent another can discover.'

- Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Dancing Man

Learn more:

• Google Image Search Video
• Google - How to Search by Image

Original image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collection via Wikimedia Commons. (Alterations made by me).