Choices, Choices

Some interesting things in the world of authors and artists today.  I saw this one buzzing around the internet and I was frankly astonished at this one.

I'll summarize and you can look up the links for yourself, if you find it interesting enough.

There is a writer, LK Rigel who wrote a book, called Spiderwork, the second in her Apocalypto series.  When she finished it, she hired an artist, Nathalia Suellen from Brazil, who painted her the most AMAZING cover.  Some time later, Sasha Illingworth of Harper Collins approached Nathalia about her cover.  She wanted to buy it for a book in development for her own house: Bewitched by Alex Flinn.  Let it be here noted that Illingworth did not act on orders by Flinn.  Flinn had no idea.

Nathalia refused the $4000 offer to buy her cover, for the simple reason that the cover had already been purchased by Rigel.  She felt it was selfish and underhanded for someone from such a large publishing house to try and buy a cover that was already being used by another author.

To make matters worse, Illingworth also asked several questions about Rigel —her country of origin and her genre.  Perhaps seeking for their purchase to go unnoticed?

When Alex Flinn revealed the new cover of her work in progress, several people were shocked to see it was a very close replica of the original work that Nathalia had created.  So close, in fact, that she was sure someone had been hired with the sole purpose of copying her original work.

As you can imagine, a firestorm erupted.  Everyone was talking about it.  How could a large publishing house like Harper Collins do something so underhanded?  Nathalia had all the correspondence to prove what their original intent was.  I don't take the same attitude that Big Publishers think they are better than the lowly independent authors, but several others have mentioned it.  I DO think that Sasha Illingworth should be fired, because I have a hard time believing that any of her managers would have approved of what happened.

And now Harper Collins is having to deal with the fallout.  Well, as soon as Alex Flinn heard about what happened, she pulled the cover (or HC did).  But that hasn't stopped the story from getting out.  I feel bad for Flinn.  How mortifying.  She was so excited about her new book and had NO idea the cover was someone else's, essentially.

Here are the links:
Nathalia Suellen's Blog
The Passive Voice
Dear Author
Goodreads commentary from Nathalia

In a quick ROW summary: 94,000 words for Aeris.  I've been sick, so my words have been few.  Hope to make up some ground next week, but there's only 1 week left till my due date, so we'll see.

Happy Reading!