Looking for a good scan of the original Fahrenheit 451 book cover

Factual Questions
1

My bedroom walls need some sprucing up and I decided a poster of the first edition copies of Fahrenheit 451 would be nice to have hanging up since it’s a neat looking cover and it’s one of my favorite books. I’m assuming I can find a place to blow up a picture to poster size to get this done. However, finding a good picture of it anywhere online is proving to be a major pain. What I’m looking for is a better picture of this . The picture in the link provided is ok, but it could be in better quality, and it doesn’t include everything that’s on the cover of the first edition of Fahrenheit.

This isn’t the first time I haven’t been able to find a picture of a certain edition of a book. Is there any particular website out there that has various pictures of different covers for different editions of books?

Help would be appreciated :slight_smile: .

2

Here’s a copy of the entire original cover (still small) for the spoken edition

Here is a book on Ebay with an absolutely pristine copy of the image you seek if it’s worth $ 85.00 to you

In poking around eBay there are a bunch of hard and soft cover copies with that image you could get for a few bucks and use to make a high res scan.

3

You need to buy that book if you want it blown up to good quality poster size. Even JPEGed to fairly low quality, you’d need a file size of at least 5-10 MB to get a good blow-up at those dimensions…that is, unless you don’t mind a very pixellated poster.

4

I’d pay good money to NOT have that hanging on my bedroom wall. I already have enough nitemares, thank you. :eek:

5

I was just told that I’m not going to be able to have the cover of this book blown up as a poster without breaking copyright laws. Is this true? I mean, it would seem to me that if I could legally make a copy of a computer program, game, or music CD as backup (provided I don’t sell it or give it away) then I could have a book cover blown up and put on my wall, especcialy seeing as how I can’t buy a poster of it.

6

JoeSki,
It’s grey. Don’t get caught, then you don’t have to worry about it.

7

Incidentally do you mean Joseph Mugniani’s Paper Man cover? Or do you mean the anonymous artist’s Fire Man cover?

8

Well I can’t get the cover of the book blown up to poster size by myself, I need to go to some sort of business to have a poster made, right? Unless someone here can think of an alternative way of doing this short of hiring a painter to paint me something on a canvas. Could an Office Depot help me with this? And if they could, would they?

And I’m talking abourt Joseph Mugniani’s Paper Man cover, but the one that has been colored in (looks very similiar to this ) . I’ve seen pictures of the same cover before, only it had a black backdrop, and the flames were colored in (as well as the paper man). I’m pretty sure that’s the first edition cover. If I can’t get a blown up poster of that image, I’ll settle for the black, beige, and orange one that you posted. That’s what my copy of the book looks like.

9

Copy places like Kinko’s, to my knowledge, will not even copy text for you. It’s highly unlikely they will blow up a copyrighted image to poster size. I don’t see this as gray at all.

The difference between this and a computer program is here you are not making a copy for backup purposes.

10

Your analogy of electronic media does not apply to print media.

This is a case where no one can say off the cuff you are “breaking copyright laws” conclusively because it would have to be tested in court for this specific case, if no precedent exists. Your blowup of the cover will have to be defended under “Fair Use”, which means in effect that you are reputedly making and displaying the copy for critical, intellectual, instruction, or other non-competitive and non-market destroying use. The odds are extremely unlikely anyone would take the effort to challenge it if it is a single poster blown up for your personal, noncommercial display in your own home. Try selling it on Ebay, and you may get some “cease and desist” letters.

11

This sorta thing has never been taken to court? That’s interesting.

I went to an Office Depot and they said they would blow it up…but they could only blow it up to 11x12 or so, which doesn’t really make a poster. Rats. Assuming I find a place that is willing to do this for me, just what kind of place would I be looking for?

12

“just what kind of place would I be looking for?”

“Just what kind of place would it be” is what I mean to say. I swear, my grammar turns to garbage everytime I post at the sdmb.

13

I also think that Una’s post/advice only applies if you, personally, actually own that book with that cover, right?

14

Wrong. Ownership and copyright of book jacket covers in the publishing industry either stay with the original artist or are purchased (sometimes with the physical copy of the painting) by the publisher. In either case, mere ownership of a book with that cover gives you no rights whatsoever.

Technically, you get no reproduction rights at all to the cover. However, long-standing practice is that reproduction of the cover is allowable for promotional, critical and cataloging reasons. So you can post a cover of a book to link to Amazon, or to illustrate the book in a review or an article on upcoming titles, or to accompany a piece on the author or the subject, or in a bibliography or catalog.

I can’t cite any court cases on cover art, though I believe there have been some that I’ll try to find. Some artists are very protective of their cover rights, especially those who go on to exploit them on calendars or other subsidiary material.

I know of nothing that allows individuals to make posters out of covers, even for their own purposes. I agree it would be highly unlikely that anyone would prosecute, but that’s a different point.