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Thanks! Right now I'm not setting out to purposely make book covers. There are things I want to learn how to do. For example the Fire and Ice cover I wanted to learn to do that dynamic "magic" effect. I have a render cooking with multiple light canvases that I want to try Shibiashake's post work techniques on. These are artworks I would do anyway to grow my skill, when I'm done with them (if they fit) I make them into book covers. The value to me in these was in the learning, so making any money at all off them is just a plus. I keep the copyright, I only sell it as one ebook cover, I could sell it as multiple other things if I had the market. It doesn't bother me to sell these for less because I got to create whatever I wanted to, and learn what I needed to learn. My skills aren't where I want them to be yet, but while I'm learning I can start to build a market. Writers and publishers often use the same artist over and over. Building a rapport with upcoming writers while I'm an upcoming artist just seems good for business, so it doesn't bother me to be a starving artist working for other starving artists for now.
The work everyone present here is awesome and inspiring!
So I finally managed to get started on a book cover. Constructive criticism and comments are welcome. This for a digital book cover. The original is sized for Amazon.
That look great. Are you making covers to sell, or is that for your own novel?
Something that may finish it off is to add a small light above her hand (where the orb is) so that there's a bit of blue light touching the face and shoulders.
Great job though. Very atmospheric.
Thank you! I want to make them to sell, I've always loved book cover art and have at least two more started. I'm a huge reader as well so it would be pretty cool to see my art on book covers in the real world. (or, at least the digital world lol). I am no where near needing one for my own stories at this point so selling them (I would really like to offset some of what I have spent here in the last two years lol) is high on my list.
I will make your suggested edit once I have a chance to sit down tonight.
I wonder if I maybe need to outline the text or make it more three dimensional or something?
Also, it may have been covered in this thread already but what's the going price for book covers? How do you figure it out? I'm not ready for print book covers, just digital at the moment but I honestly have no idea even where to begin as far as pricing goes
Looking good @IceDragonArt
I would recommend removing the word "by" above the authors name. It's not used on covers.
I also agree with bradrg that the orb should have a bit of fall off around it. If you take a very large soft brush, much larger then the orb, the edges should touch the side of the face and shoulders. Pick a very light blue color, center it on the orb and then click down once. Then play with layer modes, you'll probably like "soft light" but screen, overlay, hard light are some others you might like. Adjust opacity. This will give the orb the "glow" around it. you can clip the layer to your figure if you don't want the background also lit.
That looks really good! The suggestions on lighting are good. I don't think you need to make the text 3 dimensional, but you could see if a lighter colore would make it stand out.
I know what you mean. I started with Daz studio to create my own covers, and somehow got caught up in the excitement and bought far more products than I could ever use for a hundred covers. Once I started working on my website however I discovered that I didn't just need book cover art, but art for my entire site as well which was the "green light" I needed. I immediately signed up for the platinum club and have since bought enough to make 100 websites.
It really is addictive, but there's something about the products that draws you in like a good story. It transports you into a world and you just have to drop some $ on them.
Prices seem to range from $500 - $30. A little while ago I was looking at doing the same thing, and found a few websites that sell covers. They accept submissions and will take a cut of the profit. Most of those websites are pretty high in the google search results so they probably get a lot of traffic. Even if you don't end up using them, you could always visit them just to guage prices.
If the orb in the right hand was emitting more light to wash and highlight your character with more light on the upper body. The rune stones behind her also look as if they could be emitting more energy light on the other side of the character. That could create interesting bright rim lights and cast some shadows making the character stand out more from the background. Perhaps, a different font, something with a bit more fantasy flair and slightly larger. Don't need the "by" or the "Your" Try the title font with a few different color versions and see which one appeals to you and others the most. Strong contrast work well. Try at least 3-4 versions, maybe White, Brite Yellow, Cautionary Yellow/Orange, and the light Blue.
[edit] sorry glitchy double post.
Thank you everyone for great advice! Will definitely take all of it and do my best to incorporate it.
Isn't that the truth!
I will do a search and see what I can find as far as pricing goes as well thanks!
I started selling mine through thebookcoverdesigner.com or through facebook this last summer. Sort of... The 1st author contacted me though facebook but later he told me he originally saw my work through the book cover designer website, and he had me do a custom cover. The 2nd author bought a premade cover through the designer website and then he hired me to do two more covers independently. I only charge $110 for a ebook only cover. I don't do special artwork just for covers unless I'm hired for it. I do whatever artwork I want to do, then if I can crop it into book cover size and it looks good I make it into a cover then. I'm not out anything if it doesn't sell as it was something I was already working on. I got paid much, much more for my photos on covers, but I had a name in that market, no one knows me in this market. If I can build up a client base I'll raise my prices then. Hopefully I'll be more skilled at making them then, and feel justified making the price increase.
The book cover designer does have an aproval process. Most the time my covers make it through, but now and then one of my "experaments" doesn't make the cut. :) If I like it I post it to my facebook store page for sale, no big deal. If I also think I could have done better I will redo it just to see if I can get it past the next time. I figure the challnge makes me a better artist.
Thank you! Honestly, to me $110 would be awesome lol. And of course, I am completely unknown. I have experience selling on facebook, as I sell my beads there but its a bit different as they are sold on private, lampworking threads, in an auction style setting. But, its not a total unknown anyway. I also have my own website which, if I can get a bit more known, I would like to eventually run everything through. But I will definitely check out the site you mentioned. Its easy enough for me to just plug in the right dimensions if I know I am going to make something that may work as a cover. I'm going to do the art anyway, as you said, so if it happens to look good as a cover, yay me lol.
How many of these book cover selling websites are out there, and are some more established than others? Any perceived as more recommended?
Yes, inquiring minds want to know lol. I am going to do some research on this as well, and will post what I find out.
I don't know, but when you google "sell my book covers" thebookcoverdesigner is the top option and one of the top options when you google "buy premade book covers" they have an active twitter account and an active facebook page and promote their top picks. I liked their website better then the other top option, and I liked the fact that they let you set your own prices. They do sometimes have store wide sales, I haven't sold any covers during a sale so I don't know how that works. It's usually just 10% off though, I'm guessing you both take a cut. You can also have your own sales, so if your not selling you can cut prices on all your items or just a few chosen ones.
Great thanks! Going to do the suggested modifications as soon as I have a spare bit of time and then we will see what happens.
Some sites seem to come and go. The two sites that seem to always be at the top is TheBookCoverDesigner.com which @deathbycanon uses to sell book covers on. The other is SelfPubBookCovers.com which I think might be easier to sell on if you don't have access to InDesign? for topography. SelfPubBookCovers can hire a typographer for any print book covers that might be ordered based on your ebook covers. Since I don't have the Adobe stuff, I can't do print book covers if I decide to sell any covers I might create. That was my major reason for choosing them when I'm ready to sell my book covers. Oh, they also do a lot of promotion on FB and Twitter.
I don't know if TheBookCoverDesigner has the same option for typography, but I don't think so. Everything I read on their site seems to indicate that they are more of a broker than SelfPubBookCovers. I think for a beginner who has no clue what they are doing SelfPubBookCovers would be a nice place to start because they have a set number of fonts that you can use and you can still do the print covers if the author asks even though you can't do the typography yourself which I thought was a nice option.
I think both are well worth looking into.
I talked to those over at The BookCoverDesigner (had a lot of questions), because I was curious if the renders I have done would be possible to be used to make covers. I linked them to my gallery here on Daz, and once she came back to me she said that they weren't looking for 3d renders as cover art because their target audience isn't keen on them. Than she suggested a few other places like flickr etc if I wanted to sell my things, so that was nice. But I can't really understand why it wasn't ok to use 3d renders, since it's pretty much the same as using photos and such when building a cover, and others are using renders for the covers so not really sure what to think :/ It also made me a little sad, since I don't know if she really meant that they don't want renders to be used or if she simply didn't think I was good enough but didn't want to say that.
I use SelfPubBookCovers to sell covers. I haven't sold tons of them, but then again I haven't submitted tons of them either and generally only do covers if there's nothing else on or I'm gripped by an idea which won't let me get on with other stuff until I've made it real. I've probably got somewhere between 100-200 covers up there, which is a drop in the ocean compared to those who make it their business to submit a bunch of covers every day and have thousands to choose from. A lot of those people use stock photos rather than renders and don't have to wait hours for an image to form on the screen before they can use it, but I've seen Vicky and Michael around quite a bit on the site, not to mention all the dragons and creatures that stock photographers would struggle to find.
Artists can set their own prices there too, the lowest being $69. I charge $75 for mine, which might not seem like much (although not bad for an hour or thereabouts of work when there's nothing on the telly if you don't count the render time, and many take even less). However, of the dozen or so sales I've made, one has led to a request for a back cover and spine and one to a request for a series of six covers which involved little more than modifying the colours of the original. Beer for man and dog that weekend :) It can take a while for a cover to sell and a lot probably never do, but every now and then I'll see a notification of sale in my inbox, typically for something I'd almost forgotten doing. I'd probably do more of it if I had a faster computer. 'Simple' seems to sell well though, and I'm usually surprised to see that something I've spent very little time on has sold, while other things with a bit more substance to them that I've laboured over longer remain on the site. I'm probably not the best judge of this though - I've made the site's 'Facebook Cover of the Day' thingy a few times, and at least one of these was with a cover I wasn't even going to submit because I didn't think that much to it.
The main drawback to the site for me is that cover text is limited to a small bunch of colours and an even smaller bunch of fonts. This is so that authors can replace it with their own name and title using the site software, easily reproducing the look you've created. I can see the logic here, but it can feel a bit restricting. Check any site you're thinking of for similar limitations before you get attached to any particular font or text colour. There's also an approval process and rejection can feel a bit personal at first but you can learn a lot from it too, as I've never had a cover rejected without a reason and a chance to remedy it. Sometimes though I think it's just better to let ropey covers die. Me - cover murderer :) I have no idea how payment works on other sites, but I do like that payment for a sale clears into your PayPal account in just two days, and even on the very next day on one occasion.
One thing I would recommend is to build up a rendered library of components such as skies, trees and genre-related items on transparent backgrounds like guns, bloodstains, planets, spaceships in flight, fantasy orbs or whatever that can be quickly layered with a render of a figure, creature or building and maybe some Photoshop effects or brushes so that some covers can be produced in less time. 'One shot' covers featuring scenes that take forever to set up can be satisfying to do, but a simple test render of a character that turns out unexpectedly well is just as likely to sell if teamed with other interesting elements, all of which can be used over and over again in different ways on other covers.
I honestly hadn't planned to use the render straight out of the box so to say, but would have used it to make a cover by mixingi t with something else etc, like I expected it to be. I also did expect to have covers rejected, probably more than less *laughs* but what throw me off in her response was that they didn't looked for 3d renders for their covers. Ah well *shrugs* might try another place *eyes the other website listed above*
Don't let that stop you from using them. I certainly will be submitting them and mine are 3d as well. Mixed with 2D, but I have to wonder if she didn't know that they were 3d if she would have even known,
Good question IceDragon, and I would assume it isn't all that easy to see if one don't do 3d themselves, and even than it isn't easy to see very often (in my opinion atleast). I might publish there anyway as you said, need to make a cover first *laughs* and need to decide wether to use my name or use the name of my former pet ferret breeding or the like :)
Lol she will have forgotten who you are if she deals with a lot of people. Although, I don't know what your pet ferrets name was so who knows, maybe it will become a famous name lol.
I think it depends on how much they look like "3D" renders. Ideally, with halfway decent renders and some Photoshop, they can look like most anything. There are a number of artists on TBCD that use 3D assets (purchased, made), but they don't have that plastic 3D rendered look, if you known what I mean. Bear in mind you need dozens of covers to keep your work on the top of the lists, with new entries weekly, and ideally, your own social network to get potential authors to stop by.
Though not as crowded when I got into the game, one of the big problems now is Fivver, where there are some artists willing to do full-service covers for $30-50, They have tens of thousands of sales, and some of the work is quite stunning.
If you do this, and use a marketplace site like TBCD, definitely spend quality time developing your own users. If you do romance covers, get involved in some forums and groups about romance novels (they don't have to be writer groups). Same with sci-fi, mystery, children's, whatever. While it's true that you may end up bringing customers to the site that you'll then lose to another artist. But that's part of the game. Write really good blurbs about your covers, and even suggest some story lines that could go well with it.
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Also consider adding a freebie that helps set you apart from the others. If you have Photoshop, invest 20 bucks io a "book cover action" script, which will turn your 2D art into a faux 3D book mockup. Offer it for free with your finished cover. With the Photoshop actioni t takes all of 15 seconds to create the mockup, which your customer can use as an online sales tool
I think you mean Photoshop. InDesign is generally used for producing the interior of the book -- placing text, illustrations, headers/footers, page numbers, and all that. Photoshop (or similar) can be used to add type to some art used on the cover.
You mention "come and go": there seems to be more going than coming right now, though it's cyclical. A few years ago, there were many other popular multi-artist marketplaces, and now just a few. Most of the cover sites are now single-artist, or part of a more robust self publishing platform.
The thing about these marketplace cover sites where they add the text is that you don't get to work directly with your customer. You ideally want the person who buys your cover to be YOUR customer, and that happens best if you interact with him or her when customizing the cover to their needs. You'll work with that customer via email, and if the experience is a positive one for them, will come back to you when they're in the market again. Because they worked directly with you already, they are more likely to continue that relationship without involving the middleman.
I agree about the 3D render look, and it can be worse with renders that seem as if realism was the intended effect. I find that it's often better to go for the deliberately 'painterly' look, rather than ending up with something that looks like you were going for realism but fell just that bit short. I use Digital Art Painter for that, and really ought to be doing it more often as it paid for itself pretty quickly with the sale of the covers shown below. Apart from the many, many effects offered by the software, what I really like about it is the way it resizes the images it processes - I can feed it a 1200 x 1600 render and it will process and spit out a 3600 x 4800 render of the same with no ill-effects, with optional layers that you can take into Photoshop. Great for a machine like mine which struggles to render at the 3126 x 4168 size demanded by SelfPubBook covers if there's much more than a figure and some hair in a scene (another reason why I like the 'layering simple elements' approach).
I wasn't sure so I went back to SelfPubBookCovers and took a look at the part that talks about typography and print covers. This is what they say:
Q. What if the author needs a back cover/spine for a cover that I designed?
A. You can earn an additional $75 for doing the back cover/spine. You will have 24 hours to accept the assignment. After you accept the project you will have 48 hours to turn it around to us. You MUST be proficient in either Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator to do the typography. If you cannot do the entire project, you can do the Photoshop work and split the project fee 50/50 with another artist (of our choice) who will finish up your design with the typography in either InDesign or Adobe Illustrator.
I don't have either of those so I'm not sure what parts they use for the typography.
Maybe they have a file format requirement, but neither is strictly required for a full cover, especially later versions of Photoshop that have highly advanced tyography tools. The spine needs to be a specific width according to the gauge of the paper and number of pages, but that too is quite readily done in Photoshop, and with equal accuracy.
A benefit of InDesign or Illustrator would be the ease in changing the spine width, but with a few steps it's done in Photoshop as well, and changes always incur a cost to the client. It's generally accepted to set the spine just once, after they have paginated their book and know the exact number of pages it will print at.