Cover Art

Illustrator, or the open source alternative, Inkscape, are vector-based drawing programs that may be good choices. Photoshop and GIMP are raster-based (pixel).

 

I joined the above-mentioned Facebook group about cover art. I find myself dismayed by the number of premade covers available for sale (e.g. someone designed them without knowing the book they'd be put on) that are fantasy-related covers with scantily-clad women, most of them carrying swords. Is this what artists expect that people are writing? Is this what people are actually writing? If so, does it really sell that well? If so... *sigh*

 

The group covers all genres, and there are certainly offerings for other things, but if you were basing your idea on the kind of books being produced by the kind of spec covers being produced, you'd think that 80% of all literature written was tawdry fantasy. Which may be the case. And if that's the market, I don't believe I will have much to contribute.

Here's an example image:

 

As I said, it's paranormal romance in that group mostly. So yes, tawdry fantasy. That genre is very sex heavy.

 

My blood cries out from the ground at this cover. Who actually reads this sort of garbage, anyway? I can practically predict the plot just from looking at the template cover.

 

Maybe that's how this crap gets written: someone creates a tawdry cover, someone else imagines the plot from the cover, then cranks out a novel to fit. I remember my grandfather joking about my needed car repair once. It was something of a jalopy. He said, "The fix here is easy. Roll the car into the garage, pop the hood, remove the radiator cap. Then back the car out and roll a new one in and put the radiator cap on it."

He was such a card.

 

I wouldn't say those people are writing crap but I suppose that depends on what your focusing on. A decent amount of those authors have honed in their skills to write to a certain market, giving a group of people exactly what they want. That takes a lot of effort--tons of writing, refining, and research. They are working very hard. And the time frames they work under to appease their fans is crazy.

I won't fault you for none of that sounding appealing to you though. It's not for everyone and for a lot of writers other aspects are much more important. I was a literary writer a long while before I switched to this game and the skills and goals are very different.

That's the point. It's some people's escapism. They don't want something with depth. The same as some people watch HGTV and some people play Animal Crossing on their Nintendo Switch. Having a hobby like that is important for mental health. But I'm throwing rocks in glass houses. I have certainly called reality tv garbage on more than one occasion and that's just me doing the same thing, haha.

 

I get it, and if you're actually making a living selling books then more power to you.
And it's not like I don't read anything commercial. I love pulp fiction myself. Barsoom anyone? It's just these fantasy/paranormal subgenres that get my hackles up.

 

Hi,

Don't know for certain which site you're talking about but if it's the one I mentioned - Book Cover Design Marketplace - you're looking at it wrong. I've used the premade sites as well - someone mentioned selfpubbookcovers and there's also thebookcoverdesigner - and spent ages trawling through images looking for one that matched my book. But with the facebook site you have two other options.

You can simply place an add - ie I want a cover with this on it, in this style, for this price and see who comes knocking. Or you can go through the lists, take a look at pictures that catch your eye, look like they're the style you want and contact the artist directly. I've done both.

As for the picture you posted - and it does look familiar - I'm happy to just enjoy the picture and the teenage boy I once was would happily have bought a paperback with that on the cover. As a writer the only problem I have with it is that it doesn't match my books.

But hey - bikini armor rules!!!

Cheers, Greg.

 

But it lacks any practical protection.

 

Oh, as a young man, I would have at least picked up these books and looked at them. But the older I get, the more I've seen of the world, I find it unfortunate that we continue to feed the mindset that buys these things. One thing I liked about the Witcher TV series is that it started out looking like it was straight genre fantasy, and two or three episodes in, the storyline switched to capable women with their clothes on (mostly) doing practical things without getting caught up in whether or not Bobby liked Tina better.

 

I made a bunch of cover art for a series of books that never ended up being made.
I painted some pictures then tidied them up in Photoshop. Some people seemed to like them, others not so much. As long as it gives an idea of the writing inside I think it does it's job.

 

These are/were two alternatives for one of my unused covers, most are now lost:





So what do you think, was it too amateurish.

 

Way better than what I could have done.

 

Yeh, my Photoshop skills weren't up to getting the typography looking appealing enough. Looks too flat to me. I'm a bit better with pictures.

 

But--- but--- where are the hoplites? Mad Cassandra? The horse???

 

I made this years ago on Canva. It's really rough, lol. I used a number of different editing sites (background eraser, image cutter, luna image recolor, distortion tools, etc.), then uploaded them into Canva. I think I used close to 40 different panels to create the gradient of the sky. I was NOT about to pay for photoshop, haha!!
This is just 1 of 3. When Canva updated, the other covers reverted back to its individual pieces. This one, being the simplest of the 3, with only 2 non-canva elements, stayed relatively the same. cover 2 was a woman walking away from the viewers. Cover 3 was the desert city on a lower panel, the moons on the upper panel, and eyes in the center panel with a flashy gold border (fancy, i know).
had some bored nights in college, i tell ya....
Also, the title has changed since then. Back when I made this, I had my WIPs simply labeled "book 1" "book 2" etc.

Anyway, I have always loved the artists who did these covers: cover 1, cover 2.
I don't really know anymore what I want on my cover, I just know that I would love those artists to do it.