The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Okay, first up, before I forget: did everyone have a nice holiday?  See all the relatives?  Get rested up to start another year (which, for some of us, seems to be an artificial distinction because the day after is/was the same as the day before)?

Good.  Now, roll up those sleeves and let's talk turkey.

I'm unsure how this came to my attention, although I believe it was Twitter, but this past week, a friend--my publisher, in fact--posted the cover of an upcoming YA.  NBD, so far; people are throwing up covers for new releases all the time.

Except . . . the reason this particular book snagged my friend's attention wasn't for the content but the look.

Freaky, right?  And notice who's putting the book out there: Amazon Children's Publishing.  Which means that whoever designed the cover for the book had a lot of covers to look to and choose from for inspiration.

If you think this made more than a few fans unhappy or weirded out or mystified . . . you'd be right.  Some wondered what I could actually do about this--the quick and dirty answer is a whole lot of nothing because there's nothing to be done--and that made me feel good, to tell you the truth.  It's not often that fans get irate on your behalf.  

Yet if you think this is some kind of violation of cover copyright . . . you'd be wrong.  Because we all know copyright law as it pertains to using images, correct?  If you need a quick refresher, try this article and this one.  Right off the bat, I can tell you that this is not a violation of copyright in the slightest.  Granted, I don't own the copyright for my book covers; my publisher does (or the artist hired by my publisher).  If this constituted a copyright violation, then so would every book cover featuring, say, a silhouetted figure running across a landscape (I'll bet I saw two or three YAs with that cover last year) or a shot of a forest or a cityscape or girl/guy in profile . . . You get my drift.

If the cover on the left does anything at all--under copyright law, that is--then it comes closest to paying "homage" (and I use that loosely), and then just barely.  Really, all that's been "copied" is the positioning of the title.  Is it close enough to provoke a second glance?  Sure.  Is it a violation of copyright?  No.

But here's an intriguing question--to me, at least: what, exactly, is the cover on the left supposed to convey?  We judge books by their covers all the time.  In an earlier post, I talked about the reason the ASHES series changed; even though I adored the original hardcover, the book itself didn't pop off the shelf.  It tended to get lost.  So the cover had to change because the whole point of the cover is to induce you to pick up the book and start paging through.

To my eyes, the new ASHES look--and more specifically, SHADOWS--evokes menace and ambiguity.  You're supposed to wonder: who's running, and from what?  Who are those people in the background?  Are they even people?  Are they something else?  Shadows, at night and in the woods, are slate and purple and silver and blue, and of course, the thematic motif of smoke references the post-apocalyptic.  It's a lovely cover, and suggests precisely what you might find inside.

SKETCHY's cover is . . . well . . . interesting.  What does sketchy mean, anyway?  Here's what Wiktionary has to say about the word as it pertains to a person:

1. (slang, of a person) Suspected of taking part in illicit or dishonorable dealings.

   Because he is so sketchy, I always think that he is up to something.

2. (slang, of a person) Disturbing or unnerving, often in such a way that others may suspect them of intending physical or sexual harm or harassment.

   Jack is so sketchy, I think he's stalking me.

With that in mind, let's look at the cover again.  There's a girl there, right?  Lying on what looks like a bed?  Covered with a sheet (so you know she's probably naked)?  Only the image is partially obscured by the title itself; you really have to work to see this girl--which is precisely what I think this cover wants you to do.  It wants you to want to see her and, by extension, figure her out.  All that plays into the slightly dangerous, slightly come-hither, slightly illicit and sketchy story this cover promises.

So does the cover do its job?  Yes, it does.  If--and this is a big if--the person responsible for the cover took SHADOWS as a jumping-off point, then he or she might have wanted to capture some of that cover's disturbing and unnerving  elements.  In that way, SHADOWS served to inspire.  Of all the cover designs out there, that graphic artist chose SHADOWS to get his/her point across.  In the end, what I take away from this is the truth of that old saw: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I don't think there's any way that anyone will get the two books confused.


Besides . . . we all know which book came first. 

To Pin or not to Pin

by A.G. Howard

I'd like to start off by saying that I LOVE my pinterest account.

I'm crazy visual, so when I first jumped onto  the pin-it bandwagon, I was in eye-candy heaven. It didn't take me long to start building up my boards. At first, it was mainly for character inspiration:

Then it evolved to include things that interested or fascinated me:

I now have 19 boards and almost 2,000 pictures pinned. If you've never had a chance to check my boards out, you'll want to do so within the next couple of weeks, because I'm about to delete most of them.

In lieu of some posts and articles that have recently come to my attention, I'm now second-guessing if it's worth the possibility of getting sued just for fun and some extra PR. One post that really scared me points out that we should also be very wary of the pictures we use on our blogs.

Roni Loren, a romance writer, was actually sued by an artist, even after she complied and took his artwork down. Here's the link to that post, if you're interested. If it could happen on a blog, it can happen on pinterest.

The possibility is so real that several businesses are jumping the pinterest ship. For example, The Boston Business Journal abandoned their account after rereading the pinterest user agreement and  realizing that pinterest literally reserves the right to sell images any users might upload. Which means if you upload anything that isn't yours without permission, pinterest will be protected, but you could be sued for copyright infringement. Here's that article online.

Sure, you might be thinking that only people who upload images have to worry. Not people who link to the picture online, leading the viewers back to the original, and thus attributing the artist of said image. But, how can you be sure that's the original artist? Unless you take the time to investigate every single image you pin, you can't be.

I've heard the other side of this issue, too. That pinterest is doing everything they can to address the copyright concerns. In May, they added a flickr attribution to the pin buttons.

But again, that was two months ago, and still murmurings and threats abound. I think what worries me the most is that pinterest's terms of use clearly states that each pinner is responsible for getting permission for everything.

Do we honestly all do that? Wouldn't that take up an inordinate amount of time? Most of us pin for a hobby or fun. Not a full time job. Also, and most importantly, how do we know the pins we're repinning off of other boards have followed the proper protocol? We really don't. We really can't.

This article here, written by a lawyer, reiterates that fact by breaking down the pinterest user agreement in no uncertain terms. Of course, it's just her opinion, colored by her profession, but over the last few days, this has been such a concern to me I actually emailed my agent for her thoughts. I was surprised to hear that she took all her boards down just recently after hearing Roni Loren's story. Better safe than sorry, she said. And I agree. I'm even going through old blog posts to take down any pictures there that have questionable origins.

So, as much as it breaks my heart to take down my pinterest boards (GAH! all those gorgeous pictures!), I feel it's the safest route for me right now. I plan to go back to pasting any inspirational images I find into private documents instead of having it all displayed online.

This isn't goodbye forever. I still think pinterest is an incredible concept. But until they get all the legal/ethical kinks worked out, I'm laying low. I'll keep my account sparse for now. I'm only going to have a board with my favorite book covers on it, and maybe my Etsy favorites. I think I can get by with that. ;) 

Once the litigation waters get less choppy, I'll hop back in again with both feet, because eye candy is right up my alley.

What about you? If you pinterest, do threats of law suits concern you at all? Or have you grown so attached to your boards you can't even consider taking them down (which I totally understand--sniff)?

*****

**Special thanks to Bethany Crandell and Mindy McGinnis for bringing Roni Loren's post to my attention; to Bethany Taylor for pointing out the Shiny Shiny article; and to Katherine Ernst for the link to the lawyer's insights. You ladies ROCK!**