Stock photos, YA book covers, and the Everywhere Girl

May 14, 2010

Earlier this week someone posted to the listservs saying she’d read a review for Wendy Toliver’s LIFTED and thought the cover seemed familiar but couldn’t place it. Other listserv members remembered that EVERYTHING IS FINE by Ann Dee Ellis and SAFE by Susan Shaw both use the same photograph–different parts and with different color treatments, but still the same photograph.

Someone else also pointed out that while THE GUARDIAN by Joyce Sweeney and FUNNY HOW THINGS CHANGE by Melissa Wyatt have different photographs on the cover, they’re the same kid in the same outfit.

These reappearing cover models remind me of the Everywhere Girl, a young woman who did a modeling session for some stock photos and then found herself appearing everywhere–in ads, on book covers, and online. That modeling session was over a decade ago, but her image continues to appear all over the place. She later wrote about the photo shoot. You can see a lot of samples of her work in this blog post from a company that develops image recognition software, or even read the fictionalized diary of the Everywhere Girl herself.

And while we’re talking about book covers, you might be interested in a recent Guardian article about why books have different cover designs in different countries.

Are there any other unusually similar book covers you’ve seen recently?

Edit: Linda at Jacket Whys has another set: Ginger Rue’s BRAND NEW EMILY and Sarah Quigley’s TMI.

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Tags: book covers, listservs, ya lit