PG hadn’t thought about book cover design providers for indies. He suspects a great many indie authors use a friend or acquaintance who has the requisite graphic design tools and talents.
The folks at MIBL.Art reached out to PG to ask about a guest post (he doesn’t do those). However, PG checked out the company’s website and found some interesting information.
From MIBL Art:
How Miblart Redesigns Your Book Cover
- Research We analyse your current book cover, your genre, target audience, and plot.
- Suggestions Come up with suggestions on how to improve your book cover to make it fit your genre and evoke the right emotions
- First draft Provide you with the first draft.
- Improvements Polish and improve your book cover (we offer an unlimited number of revisions)
- Payment You pay only when you love the final result.
. . . .
Ebook
$150
- Licensed stock photos
- Concept delivered within 7 b/d
- Unlimited revisions / no upfront payment
- Cover file in .jpg format
- Source file in .psd format
FREE OF CHARGE
- 3D book image
- Title page
- Bonus image for marketing
Link to the rest at MIBL Art
Undoubtedly, PG’s lack of attention to cover design services for indies is evidence of yet another of his many shortcomings. He’ll keep his eyes open for interesting items on this topic in the future.
He invites visitors to TPV to share their own solutions/experiences/opinions regarding cover design in the comments.
PG requests that cover design professionals or their representatives not spam the comments with sales pitches.
PG would be happy to receive information from cover design experts via the Contact PG link at the top of the blog. Feel free to send PG studies, links or information you believe might be of interest to visitors to The Passive Voice. If he sees something beyond pricing information he believes will be of interest to visitors to TPV, he’ll put it in a post.
I was just reminded of this outfit.
They do covers, but also just custom images. Either pre-made or on-demand.
Just FYI, SF samples:
https://www.bonobobookcovers.com/sci-fi
Oh, those look great. Another FYI, I’ve seen authors recommend Damonza. And like Harvey said above, if someone didn’t want to pay to have it done, they could at least study what looks good and what doesn’t. There are loads of sites out there that will explain basic best practices, if one wants to know them.
Bookmarked.
Covers are a lot like everything else about writing: you gotta do the homework.
Nothing is as simple as many think.
It’s an interesting company, thanks for sharing. Most posts I see in this area, stuff shared online, or articles written about covers almost always talk either about a company or individual who offers initial-to-final design services or tips on what you should do for a “good” design. First time I’ve seen people focusing mainly on “redesign” of existing covers.
The usual choice of offerings I see for authors are DIY, hire freelancer, hire through a broker, or work with whoever is chosen by the publishing company. Joel Friedlander’s stuff is good for those going the DIY route. I talked to some people working for a broker (someone who mainly helps with formatting, etc. for those not comfortable with the Amazon portals or software but can also put them in touch with a stable of cover artiststs), and I have no experience with a publishing company approach.
I consider myself moderately good with all software except anything creative. I had a cover in mind for a self-help non-fiction guide in my field, just something I wrote that a lot of people use since it’s free and there’s not much competing against it (!), but my attempts to render it were laughable. I could do a mockup, sure, but it didn’t look great. So I went on Fiverr, found someone with good reviews, told him (I think it’s a him!) what I wanted, slam bam thank you ma’am, and my front cover was done. $15. $25 if I wanted the spine to wrap around and a back cover design, but he needed # of pages/size of spine, etc. I have a number of other guides like the first one in mind, I’ll use a similar cover approach, it came with the PSD file so I can edit it at will and just change the background image. Of the $15 original charge, that included a licensed use of the main image from a reputable online photo company — it would have cost me $6 I think for the image file, he does it in bullk with a subscription so it was practically free to him. Is it the most amazing cover ever? No, but it was decent.
Kristin Kathryn Rusch’s husband, Dean Wesley Smith, was doing all their covers for their WMG publications for a long time, mostly using a set template he designed himself. He taught himself the software well enough to be able to do what my Fiverr guy did, it takes him about 45m to an hour I think she said in a post.
But, in all of that searching and reading, I literally never saw anyone in the redesign phase. But when I looked at the cover above, I had an unsettling thought. The original was designed by someone…maybe the author, maybe someone else. They changed fonts, no big deal, but they replicated the basic original design. There’s no IP infringement, but if I was an artist, and I designed a cover for an author, I might be a little bit peeved if I created some interesting cover design and they just gave it to someone else and said, “Here, make it better”. It would be like handing someone your MS and having them have someone else (not an editor) rewrite it as a better book? I’m not sure what’s niggling at my brain but something in there doesn’t sit right…
Thanks for the detailed response, P.
I met and spoke with Dean and Kris a long time ago and found them to be quite knowledgeable and interesting people.
That said, I’ve not been particularly impressed with Dean’s cover art.
However, you’ve given me an idea for another blog post about covers. Thanks.
Eh, with the cover design fix I would just advise the affronted designer to take notes, because the first iteration was awful. This doesn’t seem at all the same to me as having someone do a rewrite of someone else’s work, because that still lands on the side of theft to me (at least if you’re passing it off as your own). But there are only so many variations with a cover design, so it’s all in the execution. There was nothing original at all about the first design, to be sure.
The quality of the art, the placement of the title / byline / series text, plus the typography, all of those had a great a deal of room for improvement in the OP. I agree with Mike Hall’s critique of the “After” cover; this looks more like an intermediate “better” step on the way to the “best” version.
I think that the “after” image is not a particularly convincing example as it needs at least one more pass to make the text clearer in a thumbnail. Maybe change the text colour to increase the contrast (logically the existing version should be okay, but it’s not to my eyes, though this may be an effect of too small text) and increase the size of the author’s name and the “hidden” parts of the title? I’m not sure that the “book 1” description will ever pop out, though this might not be too important in persuading potential readers to look closer?
If they take the time to study bestselling covers and note repeating components, indies can also design and redesign their own covers.