If you use a PUBLIC STOCK PHOTO SITE to purchase files for your cover, you have no right to stop other cover artists or authors from using a particular photo.
Exclusive rights to a photo are expensive. If you want an exclusive photo to use for you cover, you're going to pay out the nose.
Unless you're the photographer. Even then, you'll need permission if the subject of the photo is a person.
So, that means if you purchased the standard license, a non-exclusive licensing right from most of these stock sites, like ShutterStock, DepositPhoto, Adobe Stock, etc., you cannot stop someone else from using that photo if they buy the same standard license.
That also means you cannot harass other cover designers and authors. You're not going to succeed in shutting down everyone. And frankly, it makes you look like an uneducated idiot.
If you don't understand the different licensing rights, you probably shouldn't be submitting to publishers or publishing yourselves. You really need to learn the various licensing rights, or you may find yourself in a lot of legal trouble.
And no writer has time for that shit.
Seriously?? Oh, for fuck's sake. :/
ReplyDeleteI thought everyone knew that. There used to be an m/m romance blog specifically FOR laughing about pics, or cover models, appearing on multiple covers. "OMG Steve is cheating on Matthew with this Darrin guy! Look, photographic proof! LOL!"
I remember this one very cool pic of a very nice looking male dancer that was on like six or eight book covers within two or three years. It was an awesome photo and I wasn't surprised to see it all over the place. I mean, okay, we're not used to seeing the same pic on multiple covers, but it's not like it's never happened, even before the Indie Era.
I remember back in the... late 70s, I think, one fo the big romance publishers (Avon?) used the same cover art for a Laurie McBain cover that they'd used for a... I think it was a Rosemary Rogers book. Both these writers were huge bestsellers (Rogers a bit moreso, but still) so it's not like one of the covers was on some little newbie midlister that hardly anyone was going to see.
Okay, I found them. :) The Wildest Heart by Rogers and Moonstruck Madness by McBain. The Rogers book's cover pic is a crop of the McBain's, but they're very clearly the same painting.
So it's not like this is anything new. Or anything to get one's panties in a wad over. [eyeroll] Anyone who's trying to threaten or harass a writer or cover artist into not using any of "their" cover art might as well walk around wearing a T-shirt saying "Look At Me! I'm An Idiot!"
Angie, who doesn't feel at all tactful right now
You don't have to be tactful. It's simply been long enough since the Faleena Hopkins kerfluffle for the next generation of young authors to get their panties in a wad over someone "stealing" their idea.
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