Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Is it wrong of me to become very annoyed with prospective clients that tell me that they want to have a "bunch" of cover designers make covers for them, and then choose (and pay) only the winner?
|
Unless they
tell the designers they are soliciting from it's a contest and they pay the winner, it's dead wrong.
But if they do, they deserve what they get. Designing effective covers is
work, and it's the sort of thing designers expect to be paid for. What they will get will be something tossed off quick as a throwaway.
Back when I was a designer, I learned to submit two suggested layouts, and let the client pick the one I preferred. Offer three, and guaranteed the one the client picked would be the one I liked least.
But what I submitted was a rough, not a completed work usable as was. That happened after the client selected one.
In this case, I think they are expecting to receive completed designs, so the designers are working on spec, putting time and effort into something that probably won't get used and paid for, and spending time that might have gone to paying work instead. That will not produce the designer's best quality work.
Quote:
|
I don't mean that they'll do it in a way that's necessarily deceptive, to the participants (OTOH, I don't know that it's not, either...)
|
See above.
Quote:
Now, we don't offer cover design services, so...it's no skin off my nose. But for some reason, this behavior really gets up my nose. It just feels so cavalier and dismissive of these folks' work and efforts...
Whatcha think, Ranters?
|
That they are cheap SOBs who want something for nothing, and only their time is important and worth paying for?
These folks sound like the kind of clients
you want to fend off, as they will wind up nickle-and-diming you to death too.
(I saw a thread elsewhere from a chap who discovered a service that let him chose from many samples, and mix and match parts to get a cover he wanted, cheap. What he wound up using as the final cover was what you would expect, utterly mediocre and totally incapable of standing out from the crowd in any display. The two good things that might be said about it was that it was at least related to the book, and it was cheap.)
If the four possible choice for a cover are:
1. The author designs their own
2. The author picks one from a catalog
3. The author asks for suggestions from designers and buys the cheapest
4. The book doesn't
have a cover
the best option might be 4...
_______
Dennis