Tracy Marchini is an author, a former literary agent’s assistant, a book reviewer and a copywriter. She has just published Pub Speak: A writer’s dictionary of publishing terms.
In an article on Writer Unboxed she describes five things she’s learned. Here’s number one:
1.) You cannot do the cover yourself, unless you happen to be a graphic designer.
There was a brief moment where I thought to myself, “Well, I’m artistic, perhaps I can do my own cover.” Despite the fact that I’ve advised plenty of people to invest in professional cover art, I still spent some time in front of my computer with MS Paint, a sketchbook and a scanner. Luckily, this bout of insanity was short lived, and I accepted that I had to follow my own advice.
I spoke with a book designer and also requested Mark’s List from Smashwords, which is a free list of ebook formatters and cover designers. In truth, I didn’t like any of the cover art on the Smashwords list as much as I liked the cover art I knew Michelle Davidson Argyle had done for her own books. I emailed her and, luckily for me, she agreed to do it!
MS Paint for covers? LOL…
Fireworks 8 at least! Yes it helps to be graphic designers as well, I will concede to that, or know one in your family.
I wonder if there should be a way for two covers to be supplied. One for the listing thumbnail and one for the ebook. They both serve such different purposes.
@Meredith: Yeah, I got to the part where she said she was using MS paint and a sketchbook, and I’m like “uh…that’s really not how you need to do it…”
A quick run through Google Images–make sure to check your image permissions!–some fontery in Powerpoint, save as a JPG, and bam–there’s your cover art.
DD – Exactly. I have not heard paint mentioned online since the 90’s.
The fun part about programs like fireworks is if you find a protected image you like, then draw something like it for risk-free use. I covered this issue in a 17-page piece on Scribd called 10 Tips for Newbie Fiction Writers, especially about “copyright & royalty” images.
Meredith: Uh…I hope you included information about getting sued over “substantial similarity” issues.
MS Paint is definitely not meant for cover designs, nor is Photoshop or GIMP. I used Photoshop for my first book’s cover design and it turned out okay, but when I switched to using Illustrator + InDesign, things looked much better. Vector image editing software and DTP software is a must for this kind of thing.
Each tool has it’s place (well, maybe not MS Paint) and Photoshop or Gimp or another photo editing program belongs in the arsenal just as much as Illustrator or InDesign might, each has it’s specific uses.