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Cover of French Edition of Franzen Novel Appears to Rip Off Photog’s Book

Coincidence? The covers of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (left) and Sanna Kannisto's Fieldwork.

The cover of the French edition of Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling novel Freedom bears more than a passing resemblance to Sanna Kannisto’s photo book Fieldwork, which was published earlier this year by Aperture. The similarity led Aperture publisher Lesley A. Martin to accuse the French publisher, Editions de l’Olivier, of creating a “copycat cover” via Twitter.

Both covers feature photographs of flying birds against white backgrounds, and the covers are also laid out almost identically, with the titles and author names at the centers of the covers.

Somewhere in France a graphic designer has some explaining to do.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 at 5:17 pm ET by and is filed under Books, Copyright.

2 Responses to “Cover of French Edition of Franzen Novel Appears to Rip Off Photog’s Book”

  1. Jim Says:
    September 7th, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    Yeah, but Frazen’s cover uses San-Serif type while Kannisto’s cover uses serif type. Completely different. I see no connection. :P

  2. Jason Barnes Says:
    September 8th, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    An obvious ripoff. I do not know whether it reaches the point of actionable infringement, but certainly a ripoff.