The Chick-Lit Debacle

We've all heard by now about the "unintentional and unconscious" copying that has Kaavya Viswanathan in a little plagiarism trouble. Here's an article.

What's this got to do with book design? I can't give her/him props, but an anonymous comment (#16) over at Gothamist points out the similarity between these covers:



The Weiner book came first; the book on the right was written by the person who is claiming that her work was plagiarized by Viswanathan.

While it's pretty clear from what I've read that there's definitely something more than "unintentional and unconscious" copying going on, I wouldn't get too high up on my soapbox if the cover of my book is a clear copy of another chick-lit book.

(And before someone claims this is all the marketing department's fault, let's remember that there's a designer and an art director out there who really fell down on the job with this one.)