In case anyone noticed that I had vanished, it’s because of the really fun workshop we have been doing here on the coast since last Saturday. The workshop is on creating paper books, both design, business, distribution, and a ton of other stuff.
Tiring and fantastic fun, since we have been starting before ten in the morning and not ending until after eleven every evening. Over twenty fantastic publishers here.
Many of these publishers had never personally designed a cover before, so following is some of their covers they did here, many of these are first covers. I only asked them for one and only if they had bought the art. Many of them have done numbers of covers here, including designing interiors of books. And not counting all the vast amount of business discussions and lectures going on about selling to stores and getting into the major chains and getting into distributors and sales reps for their books.
So I will be back with a post on promotion early next week, but for now, take a look at twelve or so of them. It was great fun watching these covers come into being right in front of our eyes.
And thanks to Allyson Longuiera, the publisher of WMG Publishing, for all the hard work.
Awesome covers!
And it was an awesome workshop, to be honest. How could it not be with such great people here all working hard morning noon and night. All of us are tired, and most are now traveling home in some fashion or another (Sunday night as I write this) after a long week. And since John Helfers and Kerrie Hughes were here as well, we got some work done on Fiction River, since they both will be editing volumes of that anthology magazine. Wait until you all see the covers for that later this winter as we get Fiction River off the ground. First issue still scheduled for April, 2013.
I have an odd question. I’ve been staring at a bunch of movie novelizations since this morning, and I’m getting a bit loopy. HA!
In the various contracts you’ve had over the years:
- What is the standard word length for a movie novelization?
I’m coming up with word counts of 75k from books written 30 years ago, and up to 100k on some of the latest books. The length seems to be based on some external rather than a story reason. Like I say, I’m getting loopy. I had to have the computer read this note out loud to see if it made sense. HA!
Thanks…
They pretty much have always been, at least for the last thirty years, in the 70,000 to 80,000 range. Only rarely higher. I did a novelization of a three part miniseries once that was longer, but only because the script was so long.
And assuming you’re referring to “The 10th Kingdon”… Oh, I wish the rights holders would release that novelization on Kindle! It’ll never happen: it’s too old, and it wasn’t much of a hit, so they have no incentive to go through the work. But I liked it, and I would love to see what you and Kris did with it!
I really wish I’d had the time to participate. :-/
Very nice covers. The Mixon one is a real eye-popper.
I particularly like the fact that all these covers display very well even as thumbnails on your webpage.
I hope you do another POD workshop soon; I wish I could come to it.
We have another POD workshop just like this one scheduled in May. Check under the workshop tab above. And we may do an online workshop on book cover design next spring as well.
Impressive covers! I’m really looking forward to the May POD workshop.
Hi, Dean
I have this terrible itch to attend some of your workshops, but with so much going on and/or until I sell more books, I can’t justify traveling to the west coast. Have you ever thought about taking them on the road?
Kris and I started teaching what came to be known as the Kris and Dean Show at workshops and for writer’s groups in the early 1990s, then in 1999 we got tired of the travel on these and came home to stay. We also believe that the writers who can make it to the end of nowhere here are the driven kinds of people we want. Kris and I were both that way when we started as well and we believe that is something that weeds out the writers who only talk writing but don’t really want to chase it.
In fact, if we hadn’t been that way, we never would have met. I used my last money and threatened to quit two jobs to get to a workshop in Taos, NM on one week’s notice because I knew I would learn from it. And Kris used the money she had put aside to get an apartment after she and her husband had divorced to go to the workshop as well, also on one week’s notice. Neither of our decisions would be looked at as sane, but the learning experience was too much to miss, and we also ended up meeting each other in the process.
What I am saying is that if you want to be a lawyer, you pack up and head to a good seven years of school somewhere instead of asking the school to come to you. (grin)
I know writers just think they spring fully-formed from somewhere, but actually learning this international business and getting good enough to work in it takes a lot of time and practice and learning, and somethings that learning takes travel.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I were both invited to the Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm monthly workshops at Damon and Kate’s home in Eugene, OR. We both lived in Moscow, Idaho, up north. Eight to nine hour drive one way. Every month for almost two years we made the drive without missing a month, and we could barely afford the gas and often didn’t stay overnight because we couldn’t afford rooms. So we would drive eight hours, leaving very early in the morning, arrive in the afternoon, then leave around ten in the evening and drive the eight hours back, often to go back to work the next morning.
To learn, folks, you do what you have to do.
These are very nice. Absolutely love the design work. Not to add to your already busy schedule but have you considered doing an online workshop for putting out a paper version of books? I’d love to learn this.
Calissa,
This workshop was morning, noon, and night for eight days, with three and sometimes four instructors helping, each person getting person and small group hands-on help, and business lectures that lasted two hours in the evening and then two or three more hours of opening discussions. Impossible I’m afraid to teach online. But down the road we might do small parts of it, such as part of cover design and such online. But this workshop is the reason we do workshops here on the coast. Not everything can go online.
Great looking covers!
–Tom