Would you say you’re drawn to it… like a moth to a flame?
There’s nothing new–nothing new. Everything’s borrowed, everything’s used.
There’s nothing new, but we know it’s cool. And we’re cooler than you, and you know it’s true.
Superchunk totally ripped off Ayn Rand.
Honestly, nothing is original. Everything is recycled.
Yeah, but there used to be these things called “shame” and “professional pride”, where the people doing the ripping off would change things just enough so that other people wouldn’t say “you just flat ripped x off”. In fact, much of the time, the implemented changes would actually demonstrate a new, welcome approach of the purloined concept, and our society would advance by building on previous work.
Unfortunately, “shame” and “professional pride” are pretty much disregarded these days, particularly by the entertainment industry. So we get “remakes” of movies that are barely ten years old and stuff like the book cover above.
To be absolutely clear here, authors very very rarely have control over their book covers. So if there’s an issue, it’s with the publisher and NOT the author. (Heck, it’s not the only cover used for that book…)
While technically the former, its closer to the latter. Here are some of her other works. If I’m not mistaken, these are sort of like romance novels for the urban market. I’ve seen them sold by street vendors, but I don’t think they’re stocked in actual stores.
Its almost certainly intentional, but its an isolated niche market, so nobody cares.