Cover & Attribution Policy

World Publishing Houses displays cover images to help readers, translators, publishers, and rights professionals identify the correct edition quickly. In WPH, cover imagery supports bibliographic recognition, edition differentiation, publisher context, and rights discovery.

WPH does not treat covers as decorative stock or claim ownership of the artwork. We use cover metadata in service of clear edition records, transparent sourcing, and respectful publisher relationships.

WPH uses a clear source hierarchy. First, we prefer official publisher-provided covers, including explicit permission, ONIX-delivered cover URLs, publisher media kits, and direct publisher-supplied product pages or feeds.

Second, when no official source is available, WPH may use trusted bibliographic APIs such as Open Library or Google Books. In these cases attribution is required, and WPH does not download and re-host artwork unless a separate compliant arrangement exists.

Third, when no acceptable real cover is available, WPH uses an editorial placeholder cover. This placeholder is intentional, clearly labeled, and never presented as official artwork.

WPH does not scrape publisher websites for cover images. We prefer direct permission, approved feeds, trusted bibliographic sources, or an editorial placeholder over ambiguous acquisition methods.

Cover provenance should be visible without overwhelming the page. Official publisher-provided images may appear with language such as 'Official cover from [Publisher Name]' or 'Cover courtesy of [Publisher Name]'. Trusted bibliographic sources are labeled with language such as 'Cover via Open Library' or 'Cover via Google Books'.

Editorial placeholders are labeled as editorial placeholders rather than 'missing images'. Where an appropriate source or product URL is available, WPH may include a subtle external link near the cover attribution.

When a third-party source is used, attribution is mandatory.

WPH displays small thumbnail images only. Covers are used for bibliographic identification, edition-level navigation, publisher context, and rights discovery context.

WPH does not use cover images for merchandise, unrelated promotional campaigns, or high-resolution artwork distribution. We do not present cover images in a way that substitutes for a publisher's own catalog or the market for the original work.

If a publisher, rights holder, or authorized representative requests removal, raises an attribution concern, or asks WPH to correct a source, we treat that as a trust and operations matter.

WPH will acknowledge the request promptly, log it internally, temporarily remove the disputed cover where appropriate, replace it with an editorial placeholder if needed, investigate the provenance trail, and update the metadata or source record as required.

Our internal target is to acknowledge requests within 5 business days, with faster temporary fallback when the issue is clear and operationally simple.

WPH distinguishes between several cover states. 'Verified' indicates publisher-provided or publisher-approved imagery. 'Source-verified' indicates a trusted bibliographic source such as Open Library or Google Books. 'Unverified' indicates that WPH is showing an editorial placeholder only. 'Disputed' indicates that a source or attribution concern has been raised and the record is under review.

These states align with WPH's broader trust model: provenance should be explicit, verification should be distinguishable from mere presence, and disputed records should not pretend certainty.

WPH stores cover metadata such as cover URL, source, attribution, related source URL, and verification state. We do not claim copyright ownership of cover artwork, and we do not materially modify official artwork beyond ordinary display handling such as thumbnail sizing.

Over time, WPH expects official publisher partnerships and ONIX ingestion to become the preferred path for cover delivery. If WPH later adds image proxying, caching, or CDN infrastructure, provenance and attribution requirements will remain in place.

WPH's cover handling is guided by five principles: transparency over opacity, attribution over assumption, placeholder over unauthorized scraping, prompt correction over defensive posture, and publisher collaboration over adversarial stance.