We were recently notified by someone that about a dozen of our book cover designs were being used by a book cover design firm in India. That was surprising news to us. I quickly contacted the company in India and demanded an explanation.
The Indian company promptly responded that the designs were provided to them by one of their designers. The manager of the company apologized, removed our book cover designs from their portfolio, and stated that the designer would be “punished”. Considering their quick response to this matter and their explanation I’ve decided not to link to that company or print their name in this post. Should I?
An odd aspect to this situation is that the firm didn’t include the stolen designs directly in their online portfolio but only in an e-mail to potential clients and labeled the designs as their extended portfolio. So, if someone had not notified us by e-mail then we would have never learned about this incident. I’m trying to have good faith in believing that the Indian firm actually did remove the cover designs and not just changed the location to a URL I do not know about.
Ultimately, it’s quite foolish for a designer to use another designer’s portfolio. What happens when the design thief cannot deliver the same quality of designs as presented in the portfolio?
It’s very common for book cover designers to be influenced by the covers of other designers. It’s something else to blatantly use another’s portfolio as one’s own.
It is clearly a fine line between the influence other designs and designers have on us and just appropriating another’s work. But it is also a very real line. Once a person crosses it, I have a hard time believing they don’t know that they have. At the same time, everything is likely derivative of everything else we’ve ever seen or experienced.
Just to clarify, in case it wasn’t clear…the designs in question, those held by the Indian company, were not just similar designs but the exact same covers, book titles, and authors.
I’m sorry to hear that this happened to you and I understand well your frustrations here. There is no real way to check and see if they have held true to their promise, other than posing as a potential client and finding out for yourself, and given the nature of the infraction, there may be little that you can do to stop it.
Sadly, this type of plagiarism is becoming more common. Both the international and professional aspects of it. As the Internet becomes more global, more service-oriented and more competitive, these problems are only going to grow.
I don’t know what to tell you right now with this case, but if there is anything that I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.
I have had this happen to me with a few North American designers and countless designers overseas, mostly in India. In one case, the woman actually used my photo as if it were her own. The copy from my site is constantly being lifted word for word. It’s so frustrating. One woman in the USA actually submitted a very slightly altered version of my cover to a design competition. The funny thing is, she didn’t have the font I had used on the title and apparently couldn’t find it, so when it came time to do some further updates on the cover she had the author write me and ask for the font. Nerve or what?