Book Cover Art

[ryanmillls234]

I'm working on a book called Straight from the Blood : Realization. I have no idea how to market or how I would go about cover art at all. It is a story beginning in hopelessness and ending in power and discovery. Any help would be so appreciated.

 

[Lynea]

I guess, start by telling us which publishing route you'd like to go with; traditional or self publishing? Things typically crank out from there.

 

[ryanmillls234]

Absolutely no idea to be honest. I don't know what the benefits of both are.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Traditional: You have no say in the cover unless you somehow work that into your contract.

Indie: Think of a theme or scene and brainstorm. Hiring out? Talk to an artist and see what they think, maybe get a few versions depending on how they work.

 

[ryanmillls234]

Traditional: You have no say in the cover unless you somehow work that into your contract.

Indie: Think of a theme or scene and brainstorm. Hiring out? Talk to an artist and see what they think, maybe get a few versions depending on how they work.

Do you know avg what some artists may charge or where I could look?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Damonza.com does some nice cover work with a variety of digital artists, from what I gather.

Drop me a private message, and I can give you the email of an artist I've used.

Do you know avg what some artists may charge or where I could look?

 

[pmmg]

Reedsy
99Designs
Fiver

Are places to start. I would expect to pay $300-1000 or so. Mileage may vary.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I think Damonza has a tier of payment around $2k as well, and you'll tend to see that when you get into more custom hand-drawn work. On the upside, more creative control and originality than using digital artists who work mostly with stock art. If you peruse the stock art websites and indie book covers, it'll all begin to look pretty familiar, heh heh.

 

[Lynea]

Also, you can watch a few videos from The Book Doctors on their YouTube channel. They're great at covering basic info when it comes to editing/publishing/marketing. They also have the same info in the form of a non-fic book if you're interested. It's helped me.

 

[ThinkerX]

Come up with some ideas for the cover, then go here:

Premade Book Covers, Kindle Covers - Premade Ebook Cover Shop

Bestselling premade book covers romance to mystery, custom book cover design, & other graphic design services for bestselling and first-time indie authors.

www.premadeebookcovershop.com

Runs about $200.

If you are a dedicated cheapskate, run a search for 'public domain stock images,' open the one that appeals to you in MS Paint, and add the author and title.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Like others have mentioned, it starts with deciding if you want to indie-publish or go with a traditional publisher.

With a traditional publisher, they do all the cover work for you. That's the advantage. You'll likely also get an advance (average seems to be around $5.000). In this scenario you don't have to pay for anything. Any publisher that asks you for money is scamming you and you should stay away from them. The downside is that you don't have any creative control over what they do to your book. And that you can spend years querying agents and publishers and you might never get your novel published.

With indie-publishing, the publishing part is easy. You could go to Amazon now and upload your book and push publish and you'd have it in the story in about 2 days. You can decide on the cover and the blurb (the text on the back of the novel that sells the book). The downside is that you are responsible for all decisions. And you have to pay for them yourself. Editing if you want that can go for something like $1.000 - $2.000. A cover can be found for as little as $100 to about $1.000. You can go higher of course, but unless you're very certain your novel is going to be a smash hit, then don't (and even if you think it's going to be a hit, still don't).

Then start thinking about who your readers are going to be. Picture a book shelf in a store with your novel on it. Which novels are standing next to it? Note, this doesn't have to be an exact match, just close enough. There's a difference between Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, and Mistborn by Sanderson. Is it steampunk? Or comedy? Or whatever.

Once you have the books you would put your book with, look them up on Amazon and look at their covers. What do they have in common? Apply that to your novel, and come up with a few ideas of what you could put on your cover.

When you have those ideas, go look for cover artists. In general, keep in mind that you get what you pay for. Someone wants to earn a living wage making your cover. So if you pay $25, then you can expect someone to put in 30 minutes to an hour maybe. For $500, you can expect maybe 10 hours of work. That sort of thing. You will generall find 3 types of covers, in increasing price:
- pre-made covers. These are exactly what they say. Someone took a bunch of stock images (or AI images these days), and created some generic covers. Nothing wrong with these. Find one that matches your book. Just know that you generally can't change anything about them without paying extra (other than the book title and author name). They go from something like $25 to $300
- stock photo covers. These are a step up from pre-made ones. The process of making them is roughly the same, except that you can tell the artist what you want on them. These go from very basic (like 1 background image and 1 character overlaid on it) to very advanced with dozens of images. Probably go from $250 - 750.
- custom image: what it says. An artist creates the cover image from scratch. This gives the most customization. It's just also the most expensive because of that. Expect $400 - $5.000 and beyond.

 

[Finchbearer]

Have a look at Canva if you want to do one yourself - you can find royalty free images to use all over the place, and Canva will just help you make the title and author text. You can play around with this so it doesn’t look like everyone else’s who’s used the same cover template. This is a great tool for just getting your book out there quickly, like for Amazon or Wattpad or anything similar.

Otherwise look for designers as the above have mentioned.

 

[Mad Swede]

Traditional: You have no say in the cover unless you somehow work that into your contract.

You've got the wrong publisher if that is the case. A good publisher will always involve the author in the cover design. Mine certainly does. It matters, because the book cover is part of the image you as the author (and by extension the publisher) present and the way it is seen by potential readers is a factor in how many books you sell and to whom.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Big Five and their imprints, unless you have it in the contract, any input you have will be courtesy. Do you feel lucky, punk? The assumption is their people know a helluva lot more about marketing than you do, and they're mostly right. An author I was chatting with was banging his head on the desk because of the cover art he got stuck with... my aging memory says that it was Orbit, an imprint of Hachette, I believe.

Small house publishers, that's a different story. If I'd accepted one of the small house deals that came my way, I would have expected to have some input on the cover.

You've got the wrong publisher if that is the case. A good publisher will always involve the author in the cover design. Mine certainly does. It matters, because the book cover is part of the image you as the author (and by extension the publisher) present and the way it is seen by potential readers is a factor in how many books you sell and to whom.

 

[ryanmillls234]

Is there any small house publishers you'd be able to point me to?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

You're best off researching independent publishers, what they're looking for, etc. etc., because I have no idea what you're pitching or what they're buying. There's a lot of variance in indie publishers and tiers of respect from bookstores, so due diligence is important. I'm trying to come up with the name of one who published a Piers Anthony book, but my brain is not getting there. Edge and Talos are two possibilities, but take a look around. I never submitted to them, and maybe I should have, but I'm a control freak anyhow, heh heh.

Is there any small house publishers you'd be able to point me to?

 

[pmmg]

I see Doutrope is still around, though they seem to be subscription now. They keep listings of publishers.

https://duotrope.com/

Never heard of this one before, but it looks interesting.

Manuscript Wishlist

 

[MrFrench]

I'm working on a book called Straight from the Blood : Realization. I have no idea how to market or how I would go about cover art at all. It is a story beginning in hopelessness and ending in power and discovery. Any help would be so appreciated.

Ryan,
Before you do anything else you need to get Writers Market 100th edition book. Not only does it provide you with all legit verified agents and publishers, It also has chapters to help guide you on your business proposal that you will need to send out to agents/publishers. It provides information on how to write the elements you need for your business proposal; Query Letter, synopsis, author biography, marketing/research and comparative titles analysis. That is why this book is on its 100th edition, it is and has been a trusted source for writers for a very long time. Also, take note that from the time you sign a contract with a publishing house to book printing is on average two years.

 

[The Dark One]

Big Five and their imprints, unless you have it in the contract, any input you have will be courtesy. Do you feel lucky, punk? The assumption is their people know a helluva lot more about marketing than you do, and they're mostly right. An author I was chatting with was banging his head on the desk because of the cover art he got stuck with... my aging memory says that it was Orbit, an imprint of Hachette, I believe.

Small house publishers, that's a different story. If I'd accepted one of the small house deals that came my way, I would have expected to have some input on the cover.

All my publishers have been small publishers and I had a huge say in the cover every time.

In fact, it was always my vision / idea that was used.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I'd expect that from most if not all, small publishers, although I'm sure it would depend on the contract whether they were obligated to give you input.

All my publishers have been small publishers and I had a huge say in the cover every time.

In fact, it was always my vision / idea that was used.