Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and in the world of book-cover design “ where both budgets and the number of stock images are limited “ a little bit of repetition is inevitable. For the past year or so, the blog Pop Culture Junkie has been collecting such cover coincidences, in which designers have engaged in homage “ or, alternatively, have given the same stock photo wildly different treatments.
One Canadian cover that has inspired imitators is Ibi Kaslik’s Skinny, which features the distinctive image of a chomped-on Popsicle, later reprised for Jenny Han’s YA novel Shug. Quillblog would like to add its own, more recent discovery to the list. Compare the covers for John Berger’s Here is Where We Meet (published in the U.S. by Pantheon in 2005) and Kevin Connolly’s poetry collection Revolver (published by House of Anansi Press in 2008). Both feature an aerial shot of a denuded winter forest, though the Connolly cover is given a more minimalist treatment.