Book designer Joel Friedlander has his April e-Book Cover Design Awards up:

e-Book Cover Design Award Winner for April 2013 in Fiction

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Simon Jenner submitted Ethan Justice: Origins designed by Ares Jun. “I originally designed my own cover – big mistake. I’m so much happier with this pro version – I think it fits well with the thriller genre and the skyline gives readers a clue that the book is set in London”

JF: Smart move! An excellent ebook cover that touches all the bases. Strong and recognizable imagery, dead center aim on its genre, and a sense of excitement that draws readers in.

. . . .

[Passive Voice regular] Eric Lorenzen submitted Fallen King designed by Eric Lorenzen. “The book is an epic fantasy novel. Cover design by Eric Lorenzen, Cover photo copyright by Ragne Kabanova/ Dreamstime.com”

JF: Very solid.

Link to the rest at The Book Designer and thanks to Eric for the tip.

Passive Guy received a simple question from Amey:

Where does an indie author find cover illustrators online?

She knows about DeviantArt, but finds it too complicated and believes there aren’t a lot of real artists there.

So, what’s the answer to Amey’s question?

From Good Ereader:

Traditional print book covers draw many parallels with billboards and conventional marketing to appeal to casual readers. When you walk into a bookstore and there are thousands of books present, they start to all blur together. Bright colorful images and racy cover art are increasingly becoming more bold to grab people’s attention and hopefully prompt an impulse buy. When indie authors self-publish and release digital firsts, how important is cover art? Weighing in on the issue are some of  the top digital publishing companies and best selling authors.

Self-Published authors are often on a shoestring budget, and competing against the big six publishers with really great art is a hard task. Contracting out the cover art, hiring models, and getting the fonts just right is often out of reach for your average indie author. If you are the type of person that loves doing everything yourself, Book Tango has an excellent DIY Cover Art Generator. Using the Online Cover Designer, you’ll be able to upload your own original image; plus you’ll have access to an ever-growing library of royalty-free images that you can choose from. Once you select your image, you’ll be able to place your book’s title, subtitle, and author name on your cover. You’ll be able to choose from a variety of font, color, and style options to make your text appear however you want. If you’re interested in more advanced cover design options, you can elect to purchase the Custom Cover Design.

Many indie authors often shrug off effective cover art, knowing that readers click on hyperlinks in the table of contents to automatically visit chapter one. Really, in the world of Soundcloud where people comment during the music tracks and .99 cent ebook purchases, is cover art relevant?

Kelly Gallagher from Bowker mentioned that “Consumers are still discovering e-books via non digital ways. They even cite seeing a book in store (especially children’s an YA) before they buy the digital version. In digital only, consumers still buy on impulse about 30% of the time. Less then print but still important when first impressions count.”

. . . .

“It’s key that authors and publishers get their covers right. Cover art is the first thing that a reader sees when browsing a collection digitally and it needs to be thought out in terms of how it looks on a thumbnail in addition to it’s full size. Readers do judge a book by its cover, especially in the digital space,” says Miral Sattar, founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch.

. . . .

One thing that I believe self-publishing has helped bring to the forefront for digital publishing has to do with flexibility and the awareness of such things as changing pricing and changing covers.  Indie authors were among the first to recognize that if a cover isn’t working in terms of drawing their target audience, they can change it.  It’s not as if the cover is locked on thousands of pre-printed stock sitting in a warehouse.  You upload a new cover and it’s done.  One common sentiment I hear from successful indie authors is that they pay close attention to the cover and will react to market circumstances and situations in order to maximize their chances of a customer doing that deeper drill into browsing their books. And a “better” cover isn’t necessarily better art for the cover, which is and will always be subjective, but art that closely matches whatever the target audience is expecting.

Link to the rest at Good Ereader

From The Millions:

“Why are they still bothering with paperbacks?” This came from a coffee-shop acquaintance when he heard my book was soon to come out in paperback, nine months after its hardcover release. “Anyone who wants it half price already bought it on ebook, or Amazon.”

Interestingly, his point wasn’t the usual hardcovers-are-dead-long-live-the-hardcover knell. To his mind, what was the use of a second, cheaper paper version anymore, when anyone who wanted it cheaply had already been able to get it in so many different ways?

I would have taken issue with his foregone conclusion about the domination of ebooks over paper, but I didn’t want to spend my babysitting time down that rabbit hole. But he did get me thinking about the role of the paperback relaunch these days, and how publishers go about getting attention for this third version of a novel — fourth, if you count audiobooks.

. . . .

About ebooks. How much are they really cutting into print, both paperbacks and hardcovers? Putting aside the hype and the crystal ball, how do the numbers really look?

The annual Bookstats Report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which collects data from 1,977 publishers, is one of the most reliable measures. In the last full report — which came out July 2012 — ebooks outsold hardcovers for the first time, representing $282.3 million in sales (up 28.1%), compared to adult hardcover ($229.6 million, up 2.7%). But not paperback — which, while down 10.5%, still represented $299.8 million in sales.

. . . .

“Many people still want the portability of a lighter paper copy,” said Deb Sundin, manager of Wellesley Books in Wellesley, MA. “They come in before vacation and ask, ‘What’s new in paper?’ ”

“Not everyone e-reads,” says Nathan Dunbar, a manager at Barnes & Noble in Skokie, IL. “Many customers tell us they’ll wait for the paperback savings. Also, more customers will casually pick up the paperback over hardcover.”

. . . .

A look at a paperback’s redesign tells you a thing or two about the publisher’s mindset: namely, whether or not the house believes the book has reached its intended audience, and whether there’s another audience yet to reach. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s Rorschach. Hardcovers with muted illustrations morph into pop art, and vice versa. Geometric-patterned book covers are redesigned with nature imagery; nature imagery in hardcover becomes photography of women and children in the paperback. Meg Wolitzer, on a panel about the positioning of women authors at the recent AWP conference, drew knowing laughter for a reference to the ubiquitous covers with girls in a field or women in water. Whether or not publishers want to scream book club, they at least want to whisper it.

Link to the rest at The Millions

From The Digital Reader:

There’s been no announcement from Amazon, but I have just learned that they are working on a new tool that will help self-pub authors make book covers cheaply, cleanly, and well.

. . . .

Amazon is offering a “Kindle Cover Creator”. The service is still in beta, and I have not seen it myself.  But I have been told that the covers shown above were automatically generated by Amazon.

I’m told they can be edited by the author and that the text can be moved and the background image can be edited. Amazon also offers a gallery of stock photos that can be used as the background of a cover image.

. . . .

These are some pretty decent covers. They’re not quite as good as the work of an experienced cover designer, but on the other hand they are better than the covers of some books published by legacy publishers.

Link to the rest at The Digital Reader which includes some screen shots and covers generated by the system

From Flavorwire:

This week, we spotted a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad book cover for Stephen King’s The Shining over at the Guardian. It seems especially unfair for such a modern classic to be saddled with such an ugly cover, and so we were inspired to search the Internet for the worst covers to ever sully the faces of great books, whether at home or abroad. Peek through your fingers at a selection of them after the jump, and if we missed your (least) favorite, add it to our collection in the comments.

. . . .

 

We don’t think that even aristocratic secret societies had badly Photoshopped kittens and cheap briefcases during the French Revolution.

. . . .

 

Because this is a book about screws, right?

. . . .

We can only laugh

. . . .

 

You’d never guess that this was a 1853 novel about a couple of spinster sisters in England, would you?

Link to the rest at Flavorwire and thanks to Barb for the tip.

A reprise of an earlier post:

Passive Guy admits sometimes he’s not so good with what colors go with what other colors.

He has a shirt/tie/suit system worked out so everything goes together, but that’s because he seldom gets adventurous in this color realm

Designing a cover is a different thing. Blue shirt/red tie/dark blue suit gets old very quickly in the world of book covers.

Fortunately, PG has located some color crutches.

The first one is kuler, a site sponsored by Adobe. Basically, it’s a site full of color swatches that are easily loaded into Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or Adobe Creative Suite.

Here’s what it looks like (click for a larger image):

This particular screen shot is for a color swatch called Honey Pot. If you like it, you just click a download button, then import it into Photoshop and you’re ready to go. There are a gazillion swatches and PG doesn’t know if they all work together, but he bets all the Most Popular and Highest Rated ones do.

Here are a couple of book covers PG changed by switching color swatches from kuler.

A quick note on PG’s book covers – You don’t want to use this many colors for a real book cover. PG was just showing how all the colors in the swatches work together and allow you to change the look of a cover design.

Maybe you don’t like any of the swatches kuler provides. Another website allows you to make your own swatches only it makes it hard to do them badly.

This one is called Color Scheme Designer. With this site, you start off with a color and it builds palettes of complementary and contrasting colors with a click.

We’ll start off with an aqua color.

This color has an RGB code of 37AEA5. You obtain the code in Photoshop by clicking on a color you want, then opening up the Foreground color box. You’ll see the color code for the color selected down at the bottom of the box.

So, you take your RGB code and paste it into Color Scheme Designer and the first thing you see is a monochrome palette. (Click for larger image)

The aqua we started with is the biggest block on the right side and you have several other versions in different shades. Color Scheme Designer lets you mouse over any color and read its color code. (Your monitor may not make the two colors look that way, but they started off the same on PG’s monitor before the screen shot went into Photoshop and from there to WordPress.)

From this point, you can generate colors very rapidly. PG clicked on the Triad color option and this is what resulted:

You can see some dots on the color wheel to the left showing where the base colors originate, then the website creates variations on those on the right side.

Here’s another variation on his book cover that PG created with the palette shown above:

At least to PG’s color-going-together impaired eyes, this cover looks plenty gaudy, but the colors complement or contrast with each other.

PG apologizes for the lack of any color perception science stuff in this post, but he distinctly remembers looking at his girlfriend while that topic was being discussed in 8th grade. He always appreciated her color palette.

From AuthoPublisher:

Since you are not trying to blend in with other books, you have to use bold colours. Bold does not mean hazardous warning colours like red, unless the topic of your book is of that nature. Plain and beautiful oranges or greens (that being colours not foods), have always worked for many bestselling titles that just have text in the cover page.

If you are a designer or you are going to use a designer for your book cover, then you can use as many colours as you’d like. However, if you are NOT a designer and do not intent on using one, then you have will be restricted to no more than three colours. This restriction is for your own good because too much of anything can turn off the attention and attraction of your readers to your book, even if the content is great.

. . . .

Looking at the kind of covers that top sellers have in your industry could lead you in the right direction. Also there are certain book image elements that readers are attracted to, these include kittens, cleavage, puppies, six packs etc. You just have to know your target market really well to know what will entice them to buy your book. If you are not prepared to take the risk with images like these, then you are better off with the simplicity we spoke about earlier on.

. . . .

[W]hen you publish your book with Amazon, you can change your book cover almost every day. So do a survey on your book for online and offline opinions.

Link to the rest at AuthoPublisher

From Wired:

DeviantArt, the enormous online artist showcase, is moving into the creative services business with the launch of its new program, DreamUp.

Over the past 13 years, DeviantArt has grown into one of the top 100 websites in the U.S. and has become the go-to portfolio site for DreamWorks directors, Marvel comic book artists, and millions of emerging talents. It has also become a popular spot for Kickstarter project creators to source a logo, photography, or other creative assistance.

. . . .

DevianArt’s new service, DreamUp, acts as a complimentary site to give art patrons a place to connect with designers, illustrators, and photographers to work on everything from story boards for a film to custom tattoo designs. With 26 million members and over 155,000 artworks uploaded every day, there’s plenty to choose from.

. . . .

Clients can post jobs like designing a book cover and have artists apply to be selected, or they can browse portfolios and pitch their project to an in-demand creator. Either way, DreamUp takes a cut and everybody wins.

. . . .

Unlike markets that get filled up with page after page of amateurs or hack submissions, DreamUp curates the designers with an invite-only policy. “We don’t allow any creative to work on any project,” explains DreamUp product manager Chinmay Lonkar. ”We vet them based on their portfolios. This helps avoid the photographers competing for logo projects.”

Link to the rest at Wired and thanks to J.A. for the tip.

From Techdirt:

You may have caught wind of an online uproar today surrounding an edition of Anne Of Green Gables. If you’re not familiar, it’s a set of Canadian stories published in 1908 about a charming, precocious, freckled, red-headed orphan girl, and beloved by a lot of people. As with many things that people warmly remember from their childhoods, its legion of fans fiercely defends its integrity—so you can imagine how they reacted when a new edition appeared on Amazon with a cover depicting the titular character in a way that is quite faithful to modern audience expectations, but not so faithful to the text:

 

. . . .

People are appalled, they’re outraged, they call it disgusting—a sign of our shallow times where art is warped by corporate pandering. But really, the whole thing is a bit of a misunderstanding, which seems to have been sparked by an NPR ”round-up” style column with a bunch of brief news snippets. What a lot of people failed to realize before running with the story (or chose not to emphasize) is that Anne Of Green Gables is public domain, and this edition was published independently through Amazon’s CreateSpace. So, all of this broad outrage has really been sparked by one anonymous person using an independent publishing platform. The opinion that the cover choice is stupid seems perfectly legitimate (couldn’t it at least be a sexy redhead and not completely betray the text?)

Link to the rest at Techdirt