Okay, yes, I'm sorry, I suck. I ranted yesterday, and I'm back already with a new whine. But if you guys would rant more, I wouldn't look like a rant-hog, dammit.
So: I am absolutely fed up with incompetent cover designers. How the HELL do you call yourself a cover designer, if you can't even create a cover without a "template" that you download from some third party, to tell you how big the cover is supposed to be?
Lemme tell you, figuring out the correct size for a cover is NOT, truly, rocket science. You don't even need advanced math. Multiplication, and addition--that's all you need. Take the trim size of the book (like, 6" x 9", let's say). You already know, sans any real math, that the height will ALWAYS be the height plus 0.125, top and bottom. Thus, the height is 9.25. WOW, amazing, right?
Then, the width. Quite simply--the page count, multiplied by a multiplier for the type of paper you choose (white versus cream) equals the spine width, plus the width of the two covers (6 inches, tricky, I know) plus bleed, left and right. So, if our 6" example happened to have a half-inch-wide spine, as calculated by the page count x the paper type multiplier, it would be what? It would be 12.75" (0.125" bleed, plus 6" back cover, plus 0.5" spine, plus 6" front cover, plus 0.125" bleed. That's it!).
Right? You guys all got that? NOT hard, set out in the Kindle Publishing Guidelines; you can download templates for these things at a VARIETY of web locations, PLUS from Amazon. The specs have been the SAME since the Createspace days, so, what, 10 years now?
Now to zee rant:
I must see AT LEAST one cover a day that somehow, I'm expected to fix, guide, explain, etc. Why the hell is that my responsibility? This just happened--a client, for whom we did not make the cover, obviously, sends me an email, asking if his "cover designer" can
CALL ME, to get "my" specs,
as if they're mine. Now, bear in mind--we never really need to even SEE the wraparound cover; that goes to the printers.
Not us.
I'm annoyed by the request, but I send him the layout specs--I do the MATH for him and type it out in an email, (just the numbers, not the whole bloody explanation I just gave you), for BOTH white and cream as I don't know which he'll choose, and send it to him. I tell him to send it to her, as that's probably all she's looking for, right?
Since, apparently,
she doesn't know how to do it HERSELF????
Then, yesterday, she CALLS me and asks me a bunch of questions, and then asks me if I have a VISUAL GUIDE that I can send her. WT*? She tells me how experienced she is as a graphic designer, etc. and how she can do this in photoshop or illustrator--if you're so experienced, why would you even SAY THAT?
After ten minutes of this, I tell her to go to Bookow.com, where she can download a template she can use.
THEN, last night, I get this email from the client:
Quote:
|
Thank you for speaking with the artist of my book cover. She will send the cover to my Booknook account. Please let me know if it arrives as per your specifications.
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WHAT? I nearly
lost it. I wrote back and asked him why he was expecting me to review or fix her work. I mean, the gall of it, right? Why am I supposed to check her work? It's not my damn job, man, and I'm not being paid for it. I told him that it's HER job to check her own work, to know what she's supposed to do. I'm not her boss, and I'm not being compensated for it.
Can you
imagine what a customer would say, if, upon giving them our PDF or eBooks, I turned to them and said, "oh, wait, gosh, I better go check with the Joe Blow Formatting Company,
to see if we DID THIS RIGHT?"
Why wouldn't someone have a cow if I said that? Why don't they have a cow, when a "cover designer" says it?
I'm just so tired of all the incompetence. It's every-bloody-where in self-publishing, it truly is. It's
incredibly exhausting to deal with. Before this life, in my last life, building 5-star hotels, etc., I had NO idea that there were so many incompetent people in the world, I
TRULY didn't. Sure, I knew that there were dumb people and smart people...but I had no idea how much the former overwhelmed the latter.
Sorry for rant-hogging. /rant
Hitch