Book cover art woes

You might want to step down from the idea of a painted from scratch fully custom color and look at artists that specialize in digital covers and cost a good deal less than that--more like $200. The first hint that you are at that end of the price range is that the prices are shown right in the artists website.

My publisher fronted the cost for my digial art work and yeah, it wasn't cheap.

Those images are some beautiful, detailed artwork, and those prices sound about right and fair, I'm afraid. If it's worth it to you, save up, or find an alternate style that's cheaper. Some newer artists who want to build their portfolio might be charging less.

I contacted my cover artist about simpler illustrations for my SP work, and it was prohibitively expensive, too. I might save up for the full-length novel I might SP though, because I really love his work.

You have to bear in mind how long it takes for an artist to produce an image like the one you want. It is at least a 30 hour job to produce a work of that quality. My own images take anywhere from 10-40 solid hours of work to make, and I'm not anywhere near that level of realism. Then there's consultations, thumbnails, editing... you get the picture.

The more realistic and complex the art, the more expensive it will be, because the longer it takes to produce and the more skill it requires. Many artists have spent 10-15 years refining their skills to get to that level. That $300 is all they might make in a week if they take your commission.

$1200 isn't a bad price when you look at it from a professional standpoint.

Like writing, art has tiers of availability. Yes you can get a great artwork for $1000. But then there are artists that create workable covers very efficiently in an hour or two for $200. The use time savers like stock photography and can come up with a very acceptable cover--in fact often a gorgeous one. I doubt a single one of my covers cost anywhere near $1000 because while that level of investment might well create an exquisite cover, it is not cost effective for a book with a total earning capacity of under $5000.

Look at the artists thread here on AW. There are a lot of good portfolios there that cover a wide price range.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=234

My personal recommendation would be:

http://annecain-art.com/

Yep, low four-figures is what you'd expect to pay for the level of art on that DA page. Illustration is NOT cheap. If the illustration takes 30 hours plus several more of concepts, changes, and time spent communicating with the client, and the illustrator charges a reasonable $50/hr for their work, that's a 2k illustration easy.

Your $300 could get you a very nice stock photo cover, though. A good designer could easily utilize cross-processing and textures to give a photo a gritty/illustrated sort of vibe.

I will ask a friend on FB get back to u. She writes horror books!
lov, Jeanie!

This may be no help if you are extremely specific as to what you want, but I found some stock art that I thought was cool and in the same vein as what you linked to. Here are a couple of examples I found in a 2 minute search.

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-18638911-reaper-lady.php?st=ef7ae93
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-20633253-angel.php?st=ef7ae93

Obviously I have no idea what you are looking for. You could then hire a cover designer to work with the piece of stock to produce your cover. I bet you could get it done for under a hundred bucks.

You can try using sites like 99designs, Crowdspring, designcrowd and myself

I agree with what the others have said--especially Veinglory.

A cover designer I like--for the work and prices is: Littera Designs.

Good Luck.

napow27 said:

You can try using sites like 99designs, Crowdspring, designcrowd

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Yeah dude, it's totally cool to make a whole bunch of designers work for free and then only pay the one with the cover you like.

Spec work sites are exploitative and awful and no one should use them.

Besides, you're not going to get good work from designers submitting one-shot entries for a gig they probably won't actually get paid for.

Alice Xavier said:

Yeah dude, it's totally cool to make a whole bunch of designers work for free and then only pay the one with the cover you like.

Spec work sites are exploitative and awful and no one should use them.

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I disagree. No one is making them work for free. The artists have the option to work with these sites or not.

Hi Chelsie,

First off, great choice for the inspiration for your cover art! I understand your plight and can tell you that a lot of quality artists give flat rates within reason, it's a harsh reality, but artists really do live gig by gig and not a lot of them are willing to budge on their prices because they're not sure when their next project will be; they want to ensure they are making enough for the time their spending on a piece.

As a freelance illustrator, I can see both ends of this. I have done a few covers myself (not as highly rendered as the one artist you've shared with us) and my rates go up depending on the amount of detail/work I need to put into it.

$300.00 is a great price point, I think, but the more accomplished artist aren't going to see it that way, considering the time it may take and corrections that may need to be made.

My suggestion to you would be to put a listing up on Freelanced.com (A website full of amazingly talented artist who work both digitally and traditionally) at your price point of $300.00 and you can either, A. Contact your favorite artists personally, letting them know about your book cover listing, or B. Wait for artists to apply to the job listing.

Give new artists a chance to show you their skillset. So say you like an artists style, but it's not 100% what you're envisioning, ask them if they think they can accomplish it.

I also have a few skilled artists I know personally that I'd be willing to connect you with if you're interested in that, as well. Just PM me :}

Literateparakeet said:

I disagree. No one is making them work for free. The artists have the option to work with these sites or not.

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Sure, no one's making them, but in general, the spec work/contest model devalues design work and trains clients that if they dangle some piddly prize in front of some desperate, naive kids, they can get a substantial amount of work for very little money. And as a former design freelancer, it's really frustrating to see this exploitative crap damaging and diluting your industry and disseminating absurd notions about the value (or lack thereof) of the type of work you do.

People don't expect editors or plumbers or accountants or cooks to work on spec, so why should it be different for designers? Because it's just silly clicky computer stuff that's not real work because it's "art" or something? Because online design contests are easy to facilitate? Even if designers who don't know any better choose to enter these things (they shouldn't), they're still exploitative. No one's making you go to a payday loan office either, but that doesn't make them not exploitative.

Generally, you can find a designer or artist for any budget. Find one you like and that you can afford and then pay them for their work. Just don't send a bunch of contest losers home with nothing to show for all that work they did.

napow27 said:

You can try using sites like 99designs, Crowdspring, designcrowd and myself

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Be cautious of places like that - I'm sure there are many who are awesome on those sites, but I know there have been people talking about how many of the "designers" there copy work, steal it, modify it slightly and try to sell it to you. They hope you don't discover it belongs to someone else until the funds clear and they're long gone.

I know one writer who received a take-down notice after launching their book, and it wrecked their launch. Had to take book off the market, get a new cover, and might have even had to pay some damages too. I'm not 100%.

Anyway, just be sure you know who you're dealing with. Get real names. References. History. Artists with nothing to hide will supply that stuff readily.

Alice Xavier said:

No one's making you go to a payday loan office either, but that doesn't make them not exploitative.

Generally, you can find a designer or artist for any budget. Find one you like and that you can afford and then pay them for their work. Just don't send a bunch of contest losers home with nothing to show for all that work they did.

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All good points, thanks for explaining. I particularly liked the quoted portion.

ETA: Profen makes some good points too.

You could also try posting an ad on the appropriate DA forum that you are looking for digital designers for your cover and state your price. I didn't look at your example link, but I know someone who got really nice digital cover from a DA artist for a good price.

You might want to look into pre-made covers, too. You never know, you might just happen into artwork you like at a reasonable price. All three of my covers are pre-made, and I'm happy with them. I paid less than $150 for the lot of them.

This thread would probably fit into Art & Design better than it suits Self Publishing, so I'm going to move it there. Hang on!

I've never heard of a crowdsourcing platform that offers full scale original art, unless you are counting DeviantArt competitions (jk).

To the OP. If you are looking to commission a highly detailed painting for only $300, become best friends with an art student. If you would like to get a highly detailed photo-manipulation for only $300, send me a PM.

If you browse Deviantart you might be able to find a cheaper artist (who's less experienced or just younger, fiercely competitive, has less outgoing costs, or lives in a region with a strong exchange rate -- there are a lot of reasons).

The 'Browse more like this' feature can be quite good to search for pieces similar to what you like by that artist, but by different users who may have different commission rates. Here's an example of that feature in action. It's fairly accurate to her style, though, so you need to skim past a lot of her own work to find similar pieces by strangers.

However... that artist's style is highly detailed and very popular for concept art and game design, so I'm not having much luck finding many cheaper options. You might need to pick a less detailed style for a $300 budget.

Tumblr can also be a good place to find talented artists who take commissions.