Book Covers That Look Eerie Similar

Going back to my post A Rant About Books and Books I Read Purely for the Cover, I made the case that covers are the single most important thing a book can have to sell itself. Especially if it’s a debut author or a new reader. Not everyone in the book universe can keep up with the amount of books published yearly, let along monthly, and it’s rare that an author would write more than one book a year, so covers are a way for books that have limited marketing budgets to let themselves be known. Now, my thoughts on book covers and who design them can be read here, so what I want to focus on on this post is book covers I’ve discovered look surprisingly alike.

The Stand by Stephen King vs American Gods by Neil Gaiman 

Two authors who need no introduction. And two books who have a cult following on their own, spanning their own genre and one could say was the book that solidified the author’s career, The Stand and American Gods couldn’t be two more different books on their own right. One is about the end of the world, and one is about the need for worship. One has a surprisingly diverse set of characters and the other focuses on mostly two characters who in their journey discover more about themselves that they could think possible. One deals with the nature of evil in the world and one deals with the need of purpose in the world. And yet, their covers look almost exactly the same. At least the original version of the covers. I’m not critisizing designer for their art, but it is coincidence that the covers could be almost interchangeable. But how else would you summarize the fight between good and evil and the philosophical question of worship? Maybe the never ending high way is a metaphor for the never imposible journey into answering some of lives deepest questions?

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and Winter by Marissa Meyer

I’m not scared to admit that I’ve never read Twilight. But I have read The Host. I’ve never read Marissa Meyer either, and the only reason I know about this book is because doing my research to write this blog post I came across the eerily similar book covers of these two books. An red apple with a dark background. Eye catching to say the least. One can say many things about the forbidden fruit in the Twilight cover. Temptation, risk, poison, sin, enlightenment. The apple on the Marissa Meyer is a little more confusing, what does a book about forbidden romance in a futuristic medieval kingdom have to do with an apple? If I were to guess the artist just wanted to catch the reader by making a no so subtle copy of the Twilight book cover. None the less, Winter has a 4.33 review on Goodreads!

The Queue by Bashma Abdel Aziz and Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist

The eyes are the window to the soul, or some the saying goes. These two books have eyes on the cover and yellow backgrounds, yet they couldn’t be more different in both plot and prose. The Queue is a dystopian novel taking place in modern day Egypt after a revolution has happened. The government was essentially shut down only to be replaced by a dictatorship that refuses to accept the revolution happened at all, so they shut down all their institutions “temporarily”. The queue is a long line of people who are waiting for the ministry to finally open so they can complain to the government their loss in the revolution. Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist is a factionalize version of the events that took place in Seattle World Trade Center protest back in 2000. It tells the story of the protestors and is one of the deepest accounts of police brutality recounts I’ve read in a long time. Although the characters are all made up, the brutality of the events in this heart breaking story are true. 

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman and Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown 

You might know Daniel Kahneman because he’s the author of Thinking Fast and Slow. Well his lates book Noise seems to follow the trend of scribbles as a book cover when the topic of the book is too complicated to summarize in an image. 
Noise is Daniel Kahneman third book and deals how noise contributes significantly to errors in all fields. A book summary of this book will be up in the coming weeks. 
Essentialism by Greg McKeown deals with the pursuit of doing less but achieving more in life. It’s a book that highlights how to get the right things done. 
Why the scribbles on the cover though?

The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato and The Cult of We by Elliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

I can’t speak about The Ghost Network, since I haven’t read the book, but isn’t it eerie that two books that have nothing in coming could have the same cover? The Cult of We obviously is referencing the Illuminati symbol for a cult, but what does the disappearance of a famous pop star have to do with the Illuminati? Guess I’ll have to read the book to find out. 

What other book covers you’ve seen are similar? Would you buy a book because it reminds you of another? Do you think book summaries are important in the back cover?