Copycat Covers

For awhile The Rap Sheet had a semi-regular feature on copy cat covers, different books that used the same cover art. The series was an attempt to call the publishers out on this practice. Readers were asked to contribute any that they came across in addition to the ones that The Rap Sheet folks had compiled. I had submitted a couple then which explains my familiarity with this particular image.

One of the sets of covers that I submitted to The Rap Sheet was an image of a prone naked woman that was used on Heidi W. Boehringer’s Crossing the Dark and Karin Fossum’s Se dig ikke tilbage.

Over the summer I picked up a copy of Savages by Don Winslow and while standing in line I flipped the book open and over and I’ll be damned if the back cover image didn’t look familiar.

I tweeted about it at the time but didn’t think of pursuing it any farther until earlier today. I was reading a blog post and off to the side a book cover caught my eye, Stolen by Kelley Armstrong. I’ll be damned, there she was again.

This naked woman has come back to haunt me not once but twice in the last few months. So it’s her fault that Spinetingler is picking up the good fight. I can’t hope to do justice to the subject like The Rap Sheet did but we will post them as we find them.

If you see any cases of copycat covers please let me know and I will post them.

Brian Lindenmuth

Brian is the non-fiction editor of Spinetingler magazine and one of the fiction editors of Snubnose Press. In addition to Spinetingler his work has appeared in Crimespree magazine and at BSC Review, Galleycat and the Mulholland Books website. He also heads the Spinetingler Award committee.

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