There are sites where it is, apparently, great fun to publicly poke fun at the covers of books. I landed on one once with the original cover for Wish In One Hand. It was humiliating. Especially considering I'd paid a supposed artist a heaping helping of money to create that cover. It wasn't what I wanted, but I allowed myself to be bullied into accepting it. I was backed into a corner, with my release date fast approaching, so I went forth with a cover I was not proud of.
If you saw it, I apologize. Once I finished licking my wounds and refilling my coffers, I paid another artist to create the covers you see now for it and it's sequels.
I create my own covers for the non-fantastic books I write. They're not bad. Okay, maybe a couple. Oddly enough, Accidental Death is the first cover people point to off my bookmarks and say that's the one they're interested in reading. Doesn't sell well online, but in person, it's da bomb. It's sequel is also not a great cover. :shrug: Maybe someday I'll do new covers for them now that I'm better at it.
Of course, now, I have a fantasy novel in the works. And I'm trying to do the cover myself. I made a dragon. She's pretty cool and I'm proud of the effort. Unfortunately, every time I try to incorporate her into a cover, she looks like a bad photoshop job.
I worked on it for about 2 hours last night, so maybe it was staring at it for all that time that finally made me throw my hands up. I'll try again today.
Oh, I could probably find a cover artist for this. My other artist, the one I like, is super busy and fantasy ain't her bag anyway. There are others. But 1) I'm gun-shy after my encounter with the dude who shall remain nameless (mainly because I'm repressing that and because I do not wish to get sued at this late date). And 2) I want to do this for myself.
But yeah, the fear is there that I'll end up on another one of those sites that pan bad book covers. That can't be good for sales. Nothing like being the target of ridicule. Woohoo.
Of course, I've also been working on titles. I'm leaning toward Shroudlands: The Battle for Kingshead, but again, I spent so much time looking at that in various fonts that I now kind of hate it. Or maybe I just need to rename the city. Or maybe I should've just spent last night reading a book.
It's so much fun being an author. Derp.
The fear is real. I'm so very lucky that 1) I've been able to find photos/brackground/models that match my vision and 2) that Only is talented, even though I pay her. Except now she's so busy that may be not an option. The working cover for the Boston Wolves was semi-easy. Again, I found the photo and I had the right font downloaded, but I want the letters outlined in a different color to set them off and the graphic site where I did it doesn't support that. I really should email them and suggest it. They're always upgrading and their whole market is graphics, covers, ads, and videos trailers for authors. We'll see. Maybe I can get her to spend about 30 minutes to do the lettering for me when the time comes.
ReplyDeleteYou'll get it figured out. You're all smart, determined, and talented like that. Also stubborn. LOL
Happy Friday. Enjoy your weekend! 🥰
Hugs for ending up on that site. I'm afraid to even look! But my fiction has sold so little it's unlikely the covers got noticed.
ReplyDeleteI hired an artist friend to make covers for a couple of my patterns. Oh boy! After that I went back to doing them myself. If they were awful, I could take the blame and not worry about ruining a friendship.