Saw this on Facebook this morning, and it made me laugh. Okay, so you want your genre book to reflect the genre ...but this is just silly. IMO. Cover Designers ...dare to be different! ...go on, I dare ya!
I have found myself really tired of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance trend of cg hero in the middle, background city/landscape, magic coming from their hands. Because of that I'm hoping to get more artsy with Photoshop but it's hard to motivate with that because of how long things like that take me. Plus, stock photos are becoming more recognizable lately to romance readers because every indie publisher is using them.
I notice the entire YA section is black/dark covers. They're like the concert-Ts of the book world. It's done almost for the same reason, when you think about it. (I like concert Ts. I'm going to go pick one out right now. I have hundreds.)
Some time in the late 70's or early 80's an artist named Burne Hogarth said we're seeing the end of the age of the professional and entering the age of the amateur. He was not wrong.
Its because you don't want you cover designer to be different... people who read historical romance expect their cover to feature a woman in historic dress facing away... because that's how they recognize a historical romance... if you instead put say a carriage on your cover your sales will be significantly less
I call utter bullshit. Maybe there are more amateurs but there is no less professionals. There is just MORE is all.
For sure but I also think there could be a bit more creativity within the standard expectations. Or maybe wish there could be. That said, the cover types I said I was tired of are on several of my covers because of your point. The readers need to know what they are getting. Same with the whole "dark covers". It communicates tone/content that is darker.
he meant as artists i think... most cover designers would freely admit they arent artists, they're designers which is whole other skillset... no one is going to pay thousands to commission an artist to paint a cover when a designed cover done in photoshop and illustrator will sell better
One of the big areas where professionalism has receded largely is filmmaking. Hollywood studios used to run on an apprenticeship system, new people would apprentice with one professional for a while in one department, and if they showed some promise the pro would teach them things. You might start in editing for a year or two, work with several different editors (each for a decent amount of time), then move to costumes, props, lighting, camera, directing, etc—until you knew every part of the business. Only then could you become a pro, and only in a department where you really knew your stuff. Now directors are hired straight out of film school and if their first film is a hit they're touted as the next big thing and put on increasingly big productions. No apprenticeship, and they don't learn any craft aside from directing. As soon as they have 2 or 3 failures they're cast aside. Editors and proofreaders seem to have slipped considerably since the 70's as well. Supposedly professionally edited/proofread books these days have ridiculous mistakes in them, some are filled with them. Most of today's books would never have made muster a few decades ago. And of course now there are writers who sell their own books without ever submitting to any kind of editor or proofreader. The artists making cover art are no longer required to graduate from a strict art school that actually teaches the principles of art. Of course that industry died long ago, shortly after modern art took off in the galleries and all the schools threw out pro-level training and just taught 'Draw what you feel, paint what you feel'. Some of the last truly classically trained artists were working in the 70's and into the 80's. Fortunately ateliers (pro-level art schools) are making a comeback now, and people are hungry for the training. And as has been mentioned already, photoshop makes everybody and their trained monkey think they're designers. But the vast majority of them haven't learned the principles of art and design. Amateur doesn't necessarily mean bad—a lot of great discoveries for instance were made by amateur astronomers, and amateur artists/writers etc can often be better than professionals. A pro just needs to make it through whatever level of schooling is required and if they're above the median level they can get work. A talented and dedicated amateur can learn a lot more and develop their skills to a higher degree if they really want to. Most of the amateur work being done and sold today doesn't come close to this level though. We've gotten used to incredibly bad spelling and editing in Kindle books and the likes (not all of course, but a vast majority) and even atrocious writing. There's no bar anymore, anybody who can crank out the required number of words can publish a novel and sell it.
