Folks, you want to read this article by Kris. It’s part of a series she’s doing that you all should be following.
And honestly, I have no idea what she’s going to write about before she does and she doesn’t know what topic I’m going to tackle. Kind of fun that way.
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published traditionally more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he co-wrote The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and ghosts for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean wrote books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and wrote scripts for Hollywood. One movie actually saw film.
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
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Your are so correct, Dean!
That’s a great post from Kris!
Read it, folks!
Dave Bischoff
I was Chapters (Canadian bookstore chain) today, and saw a book called The Indie Author Guide: It details the market past, present, and possible future. A lot of what she talks about falls along the same lines as what you and Kris say. From my limited knowledge of this business, I think its a good book. She spoke of things I learned in my first go-round self-publishing my first book and the lies I told myself, and the fear and such. She also talked about the realities of big publishing and how the new writer still might not get that big backing they were hoping for when the publisher signed them, and the pointlessness and costliness of self promotion. The differences between self publishing, vanity press, POD, etc were covered. Great book, I thought.
Right now, my biggest concern is how to generate my OWN artwork for the cover of my books! I don’t want to have to pay someone to do it for me, as art for 3-5 books a year can get costly. Do you have any suggestions, Dean?
Ramon,
Find the art either public domain or through royalty free sites where you have to pay a buck or two for the use of the artwork and credit the artist. Take a look on Kris’s site at the Sins of the Blood cover. I did that, the art cost $3.00 exactly, royalty free.
Takes some time searching and doing Google searches, but the stuff is out there. A ton of it. Actually some top artists are putting their stuff up for small fee download use. Great artists, actually.
Also, watch the size of the download. I usually use a smaller download size which is cheaper. If for some reason you need a high resolution download, very large file, it costs more. I only use that when I need the cover for a POD book, or when I am only using a tiny piece of the larger artwork. Then I spend the eight or ten bucks for a larger file.
Thank you! Changing the art is the only reason I haven’t yanked my first book from iuniverse and moved it to Createspace. I’m looking into this right now!
Loved the article. Loved the entire series, actually. I’ve learned a lot from those, and recommend them to folks on a very regular basis. =)
…or when I am only using a tiny piece of the larger artwork.
Never crossed my mind to take only a tiny piece of the larger artwork. I’ve taken half before, but never anything smaller. Gotta start looking at the pictures a bit differently now.
Quick off-topic question. I thought you said once that most magazines will look at short stories that have been epublished by an indie author. I’ve been looking at submission guidelines for some SF magazines (like Strange Horizons) and unless I’m not understanding it, an epublished short story is off limits to them.
Could you give me a kick in the direction of what magazines you may have been referring to?
Or maybe I got the whole point backwards?
TIA
Lois
No, I have always said that magazines WILL NOT buy indie published stories. However novel editors are doing so all the time now. But not short fiction.
Thanks for the heads up. I wondered if I had that backwards . . . and I did.
Thanks, Dean. I follow Kris’s posts and she has some great stuff there.
Do you have any other hints on good covers. I am a total ignoramus when it comes to graphics. Or a book or blog on the subject?
I know some good sites for getting royalty-free art. I happen to like dreamstime which charges less than some but has some nice illustrations. But there are a lot of them, but what about fonts? Backgrounds? That sort of thing?
Plain? Fancy? Bright? Dark? Does it matter?
All different per book I’m afraid, J.R.. Most people spend the time and money to learn photoshop, which has a very steep learning curve with it. I have it, but seldom use it. I use either InDesign for POD and more complex covers and PowerPoint for easier covers. All my recent challenge stories are just in PowerPoint.
But I will say that templates help so that you aren’t always starting from scratch, and also make your fonts big and clear enough that the title and author name can be seen at postage stamp size. That’s a key these days.
Sorry I couldn’t help. I’m just learning myself, as evidenced by how some of my early covers suck. (grin)
Some good general principles from other forms of digital design which I think carry over well…
1. Minimize the number of fonts. Keep it down to one, or two. Maybe three in rare cases, but that’s probably too many.
2. Use clear, readable fonts. Fancy fonts generally get in the way, even more so at postage stamp size. If you look at most professionally designed books, they use fairly basic fonts. Bold, block letters are common, swirling “cursive” style fonts are rarely used and if they are (such as in some romance books), it’s often just for a piece of the text – like using it for the title, and block letters for the author if the author matters more (ex.: a newer Mercedes Lackey romance: http://amzn.to/hl39f7 )
3. Try not to use a lot of special effects on your text. There’s times when you want to – like Dean’s “On Top of the Dead” uses red to outline the letters. This works, because it helps make the text stand out, and the red works great in the over all red/black/white color scheme. A little drop shadow goes a LONG way, and non-black drop shadow is usually tacky looking.
4. Think about complementary colors and color patterns which work well together (like the r/b/w I mentioned above).
5. Try to avoid “collage syndrome”, where the image looks like several badly pasted together bits of clip art. You’re better with one, strong image and nothing else than you are with several badly clipped together images.
6. Try to avoid a cover that’s just a sunrise or sunset. Tacky, common, a staple of tossed together art.
Really, if you go to a bookstore and get a good book on general graphic design, you’ll probably read most of what I just wrote, and a bunch of other stuff that will be useful as well. If you’re going to do your own covers, it’s probably a good investment.
I use Photoshop for art, but that’s because I used it for years designing textures for games. Gimp is another option, but it’s even harder to learn than Photoshop (although it’s free!). Honestly, I think Dean’s idea of using Powerpoint (or the free Libre Office version of it) is pretty neat, so long as you’re keeping your covers ultra simple.
Good advice, Kevin. Where were you when I started some of my really ugly covers a year ago. (grin)
Ramon, an anal first-reader is usually enough. No book is perfect, just get as much as you can, and a first reader who likes looking for that kind of thing (a former English major) is wonderful.
That’s what we do. We have a wonderful woman who loves to read, isn’t a writer, and likes finding mistakes and comparing a published version to a manuscript version. We pay her a small amount per book and she enjoys it. We have also done some trading on a book that needs even more work because of scanning problems. But mostly it’s just a good first reader and going for it.
Sorry I’m a little distant this week. Workshops here and numbers of wonderful professional writers in town. Great fun.
Can Stock Photo is a good site for art that I found. I picked out a fairly neutral cover for the book that would work. Eventually I’m going to need to do something more specific to the novel itself, but for now, the selection works.
Oh, Dean. Might I ask,what do you do about copyediting with your self published works? I was on Kris’s site and she mentioned that she posted a link on something to do with copyeditors or copyedit groups or something. I searched for over an hour and couldn’t find it.
Off the top of your head, do you know of any such resource?
I know you both say not to worry too much about the mistakes, but since I have the task of trying to attract readers to an unknown author, I need to put my best foot forward.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, Dean. We appreciate it!
Great info, Kevin! Thanks!
JR –
I, too, have NO background in graphic design — but I make my own covers, and I’ve gotten several nice comments about my covers.
I use PowerPoint or Keynote (for Mac) for my covers, and when I began making them I simply copied what I saw Dean and Kris doing, which all boils down to two basic principles –
A good picture.
A clear, readable font.
EVERYTHING depends on those two. The only time I use word art in PowerPoint is when I need to make the font stand out. Sometimes that means putting a shadow or glow around the font, and other times it means putting a black box around the font. It depends on what picture I use.
But I’m lucky b/c my wife is a MASTER at PowerPoint and for my first several covers I would ask her what she thought, and she showed me a lot of tricks. Now that I’ve learned, I don’t go to her so much. In fact, I’ve showed her some things about PowerPoint — but that’s only b/c I use it in ways she doesn’t.
I’d recommend blatant imitation. When I first started making ebook covers, I tried to find one of Dean’s or Kris’s covers that I liked and then tried to imitate what they did. Of course, I had a different picture, a different title, and have only two names in my name, not three — but, trying to duplicate a cover helps you learn really quick.
Even today when I’m unsure about what kind of cover I want I’ll scan all of their covers looking for ideas.
But like writing, making covers takes practice. Do you best with the first one, then forget about it and move on to the second.
Exactly, Jeff. I tried to copy some of the covers I saw that stood out at postage stamp level. Big name writers. And trust me, my first covers sucked worse than my early ones that are now up. But by doing them and releasing and getting better, down the road you can always go back and change them. The wonder of electronic publishing.
I like what you’ve done with your covers, Jeff, especially a couple of the more recent ones. I’m especially fond of the designs for “Alien Camp” and “Shattered Wonders”.
Nice blog, too.
Thanks, Kevin. Really appreciate it.
“Alien Camp” has gotten a lot of comments … and it was nothing special, really. I found the picture on Dreamstime, bought it, and then slapped the title and my name on it and picked a font that looked sufficiently SF.
“Shattered Wonders” was a bit more complicated. Because I have the most recent version of PowerPoint, I’m able to remove parts of the image. I removed the background of the shattered glass and then found a nice starry picture to put behind it. It took me a while to come up with the idea, but once I had it, it didn’t take long to execute. And it really is my favorite cover.
I actually find that the hardest part with the covers is finding a picture. This is especially true since I write primarily science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I think. Lots of hours spend looking through morgueFile, Dreamstime, and other photo sites.
The key is just having fun and trying different things and not worrying if it doesn’t work. If later you find you don’t like it, you can always change it.
Just like writing.