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The two book covers
Eddo-Lodge felt Lindsay’s book was ‘disappointingly derivative of both the title of my book and Greg Heinimann’s award-winning cover design’. Composite: Supplied
Eddo-Lodge felt Lindsay’s book was ‘disappointingly derivative of both the title of my book and Greg Heinimann’s award-winning cover design’. Composite: Supplied

Publisher accused of 'ripping off' best-selling book on racism

This article is more than 4 years old

Ben Lindsay’s We Need To Talk About Race has similar cover and title to prizewinning book by Reni Eddo-Lodge

The publisher of a new book about racism in the UK has been accused of “ripping off” Reni Eddo-Lodge’s best-selling polemic Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, after announcing a book with a strikingly similar cover design and title.

Ben Lindsay – the author of We Need To Talk About Race – which focuses on ethnicity and the church – and his publisher SPCK launched the book online on Thursday.

Eddo-Lodge released a statement saying that neither Lindsay or SPCK had approached her before the book was announced, and said she felt it was “disappointingly derivative of both the title of my book and Greg Heinimann’s award-winning cover design”.

Eddo-Lodge, who received an honourary degree from Exeter University this week, said that while she “recognises that imitation and comparison title and covers are core to publishing’s business model … this close imitation is a missed opportunity for what has the potential to be a fresh take on an old problem”.

The author Yomi Adegoke said the approach showed the “copy and paste” publishers had towards minority authors.

I’m sure that Ben Lindsay’s book makes a lot of relevant points about racism in the church, but the cover art and concept are both heavily influenced by Reni Eddo-Lodge. This public conversation about race must deal with why Black women’s work is so often uncredited and copied. pic.twitter.com/PFQ9aq4ZJP

— Sister Outrider (@ClaireShrugged) July 18, 2019

“Publishing is a bandwagon industry anyway but with minority authors they really think it’s a case of copy and paste,” Adegoke tweeted. “There’s paying homage/being inspired but rarely do those attempting to rip off, engage with [or] openly acknowledge who they have obviously emulated.”

In a statement, SPCK said Lindsay hugely admired Eddo-Lodge’s book but was “bringing something new to this conversation”. It said the cover design was “inspired by the posters used in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, which featured black text in capital letters on white backgrounds” and that “Reni’s book, along with numerous other titles focused on race relations, share this same inspiration”.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race became one of the most discussed books of the year on its release in 2017, going on to win the Jhalak prize for British writers of colour and the 2018 British Book Award for narrative non-fiction, and top a poll of the most influential books written by a woman – beating the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch.

Earlier in the year Adegoke was embroiled in an row over the BBC’s use of branding that included the phrase Slay In Your Lane, which was the title of her co-authored book offering life advice to black British women. The author wrote about the experience for the Guardian, saying: “White men and women co-opting a phrase trademarked by two black women for a campaign, then fronting it with a black woman to feign some form of affiliation is shocking.”

More on this story

More on this story

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