Have you ever walked through a bookstore, picked up a book and been hit with a feeling of déjà vu? The New York Timesreports that there's a good reason for your confusion: many books really do have virtually the same cover art.
Sometimes the photographs on book covers are not just similar, but exact duplicates. Rather than pay photographers' day rates, most book designers turn to stock-photography agencies. Top agencies charge $1,200 to $1,500 a photograph, and twice that for exclusive rights, a premium publishers are loath to pay.
That's where the trouble starts.
Seven years ago, an edition of Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's Raising Your Spirited Child featured on its cover a stock photograph, from the Photonica agency, of a girl running with outstretched arms. Five years later, another parenting book, Children at Promise, by Timothy S. Stuart and Cheryl G. Bostrom, featured the identical photograph, as does a recently released paperback version of the book.
Mary Schuck, senior art director at Harper Perennial, which published the first title, learned of the latter only recently, when directed to it on the Internet. "Oh, wow," Ms. Schuck said. "They used the same photo. It's just a huge mistake for this publisher to have done this."
At least you know you're not losing your mind if the "book cover déjà vu" hits you as you stroll through Barnes and Noble.
Have you ever walked through a bookstore, picked up a book and been hit with a feeling of déjà vu? The New York Times 
