Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
A comment made outside this thread made me want to add...
A professionally made cover does not guarantee an attractive cover - you've got to shop around for artists likely to be a good match to what you want.
I've been thoroughly disappointed by many covers offered by the big publishers these days - so many made from generic clipart with no sense inspiration or relevance. They just don't seem to care. But what most of them have, even if they're boring or ugly, is that same hard-to-define impression of professional production - it may be generic, but those generic parts were assembled by someone that knew what they were doing.
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Yabbut, with few exceptions, the trade-pubs already have momentum on their side(s). They are producing a known author, a known quantity and the cover is far less important (they think, wrongly, I might add).
I'm not trying to be Dora Doom, but I do want to say that I have seen
EXCEEDINGLY FEW successfully-designed-by-author covers. Is it impossible? No. Is it likely?
NO.
Not to mention, as somebody else said, the
emotional distance needed is impossible to achieve. No author is truly capable of separating themselves from their work--or, I should say, exceedingly few self-publishing authors. They don't have those years of writing discipline that trade-pubbed authors have, learning to
ruthlessly self-edit, and they can't do the same, either--standing back and independently viewing what's needed for a cover--for cover design. You guys have no idea what I suffer, daily, at my shop when I take in covers. It's...sad, really.
I
STRONGLY recommend that you consider a paid cover designer. With some patience (!!!) and diligence, you'd be amazed at what you can find for very cheap pricing. (like, no kidding, $15 for a simple genre fiction cover, if you need to keep it that low.) Do I recommend, largely, more expensive designers? Yes, I do. BUT, seriously, for $15-$25 you can do surprisingly well and a
s***load better than you're likely to do yourself.
Trust me on this.
Hitch