It’s art. It’s marketing, full-on Mad Men style. It’s both, but cover art is actually a lot closer to marketing.
The one thing cover art should probably never be is art therapy or uncritical self-validation.
Starry-eyed would-be authors need to understand this sooner rather than later. In just the last year alone, I’ve seen several very new writers loftily announce they would never work with publishers who didn’t let them do their own covers.
No, puppies. That’s not how it works, unless someone is self-publishing. Not unless they are experienced cover artists and book designers. A few semesters of art in high school, college, or the local rec center will not supply the necessary experience, save by happy accident. Never count on happy accidents.
Even if an author has the right background, their experience and style may not match the marketing department’s vision. The publishers are not there to put art on a gallery wall. They want to sell books. So should authors.
There’s plenty of room in Pinterest, Photobucket, other display sites, or a writer’s own blog for concept art. Such additional features can do double-duty as promotions and reader rewards. Both Lynn Flewelling and Jacqueline Carey feature fan-art galleries on their websites, as do many other authors.
Authors and publishers establish several convenants of trust, but one of the big issues involves cover art. To boil down a lot of legalese: the publisher promises to make the best possible cover for a specific book’s market, genre, and plot (not in that order!) The author promises to fill out a cover art sheet with as much detail allowed (because almost nobody in the art department has time to read a book before it comes out). The author promises to offer guidance and corrections when needed, but not become a pain in the ass diva about it. (Kudos to Allie, Fiona, and the rest of the Loose Id designers for meeting me far more than halfway, and knowing what to do when I didn’t.)
Authors have to trust their publishers to create solid cover art and designs. To let publishers pull the plug on author-generated ideas so dangerously unprofessional they might actually harm the book’s sales and the publisher’s reputation.
In the last year I’ve seen some breathtakingly awful cover art designs, between self-published books and certain e-book genres. Two stood out because of their ‘pathetic’ factor. They probably won’t hurt their books’ sales, but they reveal some telling points about the authors and their publishers.
Both are from relatively new but growing publishers who have a lot of strong, effective covers in their respective catalogs. Both of the sad covers incorporate author-generated content. Again, not so bad in itself: as long as the author/artists have enough grasp of the Dunning-Kruger Effect to recognize their own levels of (in)competence.
Not these two. One superimposed a hand-drawn section over a blurry stock photography landscape, with an effect that might have mimicked ‘Roger Rabbit’ if the sketch proportions and pencil strokes hadn’t evoked ‘Third Grade Art Project’ more than ‘Daringly Skewed Abstracted Vehicle’. The other cover blended a badly-painted landscape (Thrift Store Desert, Circa 1970) with the publisher’s themed design. A quick search of both authors found blogs showcasing their other artistic efforts, with no apparent realization that they were not, in fact, gallery or museum-worthy artists.
Okay, fine. I’m a commercial artist, and I know there are plenty of areas in art where I’ll fall flat on my face. I know it and admit it. And these two authors seem like sweet and wonderful folks with great stories to tell.
But I would have thought someone at each publisher might have raised a cautious hand and said, “Really? We’re letting that go to Kindle or print?”
Taken as a whole, those covers tell me the authors might not be able to separate themselves from their artwork, and likely not from their writing, either. I haven’t seen sample texts from the books, so I don’t know yet. It also tells me the publisher was either worn down from negotiations, or just didn’t care.
That’s not a good start to the author-publisher relationship.
I am very pleased with my cover art that my publisher designed. I knew nothing about it and never saw itt til they announced it to me, BUT they did give me input into the process. They asked sort of what I had in mind, etc. We talked about postage-stamp size images of books on websites. They did a great job. And yes, I’m glad they chose it and not me.
You’re right, Lucie. BuzzBooks did a great job on ‘Distortion’. The image is vivid and easily deciphered at thumbnail size, the text is legible, and the whole package swiftly telegraphs genre.
So why can’t more publishers – large and small – grasp this? Book covers are like yard sale signs: they must get a message across in only a few seconds.
Whether I buy books in a bookstore or online, I make snap decisions about covers. That won’t influence all my browsing, especially if I already know about the author.
But I’m less inclined to single out a stranger’s book and look at its jacket copy if I see muddy images, images with obvious digital flaws, illegible text (I’m looking at you, book designers who keep using pretty, flowing script on covers), or even long subtitles (subtitles are fine on scholarly treatises, maybe even on romance series, but when they appear on small-press standalone misery memoirs I’ve learned that’s just Nature’s way of saying ‘Do Not Touch’.)
This is one of the biggest reasons I don’t think I’d ever self-publish a major project. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and I accepted long ago that visual art just really isn’t my thing. I’m more than happy to let my publishers handle that part of the process!
Cover design isn’t my thing, either. But a self-publisher can outsource both art and design for reasonable fees, and get great results. DeviantArt and other sites have plenty of pre-made covers offered by artists for flat fees of around $100 to $500. Depending on genre, good covers can be fairly affordable if you’re willing to research.
If I have to self-publish one of my big fantasy novels, getting a cover and book design won’t be a big problem.
My big fear of self-publishing is the time-sink of marketing. Self-pub people I know put in a vast amount of promotion, often for very low sales. So for the moment, I’ll build a ‘name’ with an established e-publisher.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
My partner and I decided to exclusively self-publish after another one of our publishers put a completely-wrong cover on our electronic novel. It was misleading to the readers and had nothing to do with our story. It was disheartening.
With the novel before that, the publisher (these are all different outfits) wanted to do a riff on the cover of a best-selling author’s book — even though that cover had nothing to do with our book. It was just a popular look at the time. When we sent the image to a close friend, she thought we were having a laugh.
The publisher before that asked for our feedback but then ignored it. They produced a generically-attractive cover that seemed to be a plug-and-play photo. It could have worked for a thousand other romances but had nothing to do with the fantasy elements that were vital to the story.
Strangely enough, the only time anyone actually listened to our feedback was for a work-for-hire novel. The artist painted our cover exactly as we suggested — we were so happy! — and the book sold well. It sold so well that the publisher later used it as one of their launch titles when they took the series overseas.
None of these publishers put a ton into author promotion, either. They each have a website, Facebook, a Twitter account and the occasional display stand at a convention…but that’s about it. They send out mass mailings to look for reviews. Consequently, the only reviews I’ve ever received, I’ve had to find.
I realize publishers are business people but they aren’t as invested in my work as I am. Since my partner was a professional graphic designer before she became a writer, we now have her design our covers.
I can see why you decided to self-publish, Hal – and why it will probably pay off for you. (Your books look great, BTW.) I’d be furious about the same treatment, if it happened to me.
Honestly, as a reader, I’ve been incredibly frustrated over the years by cover art follies from many big-name genre books and publishers. And I’m not 100% happy with how my own experiences have been. But I knew going into this that I’d have to compromise, because this was a different genre than the ones I really knew.
I picked my publisher because they knew their genre, and their reader base was willing to try something new.
These days, I research publishers by checking out their site rankings on http://www.alexa.com, and looking at their estimated rankings through place like http://www.salesrankexpress.com. Do they have a strong web presence? Do they promote their writers, or coax the authors to hand-sell books? Are their press releases common near the front of industry publications, or buried in the sea of generic internet free press releases? Do they have a strong presence at industry-specific conventions? All this makes a difference.