seeking artist

[scotty94]

Calling all Artists,

 

I want to create a front cover for my nano novel, but I have no artistic knowledge or skills whatsoever. I tried drawing a face the other day and it was an epic fail, I want to ask if someone will accept the challenge and create a front cover for me, I'll even thank you by mentioning your name in my novel on the thank you page the first page after the front cover. I'll leave a short synopsis of the novel below but the rest is up to you I hope someone will take up the challenge:

 

Synopsis:

 

Meet Me At The River

 

Gareth Middleton, Stuart Spencer, Junior Carrington and Oliver Morrison tell of their lives between the age of 13 and 18 in real time, at an all-boys boarding school in the countryside. Where love, friendship, hate, alcoholism and mental illness, are all too frequent occurrence in the scary world of adolescence.also there is a river involved.

[Aditus]

Shouldn't you say 'I will be forever thankful and of course I will  mention you in the credits, I might even throw myself at your feet'?

 

Just kidding, but honestly Scotty you might want to rephrase the above again if you want someone to draw/shop you a cover otherwise you might have to use the face or just the title.

Edited November 28, 2013 by aditus

[scotty94]

aditus I just want an artist to create a cover for my book, that's all  please can someone help me out for once.

Edited November 28, 2013 by scotty94

[Thorn Wilde]

Hi there Scotty,

 

There are lots of artists around the Internet that take commissions for just this sort of thing. Most of them aren't very expensive at all, certainly nothing you who work full time wouldn't be able to afford. It's a pretty awesome way to support other artists. Take a look around Deviant Art or the #commission tag on Tumblr, and you're bound to find a whole heap of talented artists willing to help you out for a small fee.

 

The problem with asking someone to create a cover for you for free is that that fucks things up for those trying to make a living. If you're planning to self publish your novel and potentially make money from it, it's especially dishonest to ask for someone to do it for nothing but credit. As authors, we too create art, and it's important that we help support other people who do, if we want to be able to make a living doing what we love. A good thing about commissioning cover art from an artist on the Internet is that they will often blog about it and show what they've done on their blogs, DA pages, etc., and that's absolutely free promotion for you. It's a two-way street.

 

Good luck!

 

Thorn

Edited November 29, 2013 by Thorn Wilde

[Sasha Distan]

Seriously?

I pay my artists, i give them credit and i have a contract with them for the publishing of the book (vis a vis, if it ever makes any real money, they get a cut)

 

Thorn is right, if you want an artist, you might be better off commissioning someone on an Artist website. not that we have no artists on GA, but not as many as we have authors.

[Aditus]

I second Thorn and Sasha, but I can understand why he asked. We help each other out here on GA with editing, betaing and in general talking about ideas we have. So for a first try it might be okay, if he'd asked nicely.

Anyway now you know where to go Scotty.

[crazyfish]

Yeah you gots to pay for art. Name credit in a book isn't payment. There are so many books clogging up the marketplace fighting for the limited attentions of the reader, so yeah, name credit means nothing unless your book is a bestseller.  Either save up for money, or look for artist willing to barter, or look for artist who's looking to practice their skills on you.

 

Anyway as with these things, there are options with every budget limit. 

 

Illustrated art is the more expensive option.  It simply takes more time and more care to get the look you want. Go to deviant art to look for artists and such. Anime/cartoon art tends to be the cheaper option because it's simpler to draw. But I wouldn't use it from a marketing standpoint. Customers associate cartoon/anime art with children's books, so beware. The art should be detailed enough to avoid the cartoon look.  You want a good deal of realism to signal contemporary m/m drama. You don't want fancy art techniques either. You want simple clear images. 

 

These days, the cheaper and easier option is photoshop art with royalty-free stock photos.  

 

You can do these yourself. If you don't have photoshop, you can make do with open source gimp. Go a stock photo website and buy yourself royalty free images and edit them for a cover.  I wouldn't ordinarily suggest the diy option.  Good enough art doesn't cut it in the marketplace.  You need to be able to make a professional-looking, genre appropriate, eye-catching cover.  If you're going this route, you should ask for people's opinion before using your work. Also don't sweat being original. Go for a simple cover that communicates a solid core idea. 

 

 

 

Also look through the bestselling books in your chosen genre and study the covers for guidelines. 

 

There's the ultra cheap option, www.Fiverr.com   That's a crap shoot. but you can strike gold and find someone who can make you a passable cover for five bucks. Remember any hack can call themselves an artist for five bucks, so before you buy the work, you should ask for general comments

 

You can go with premade cover art. These are covers that the artists already made. You just need to choose which ones fit the theme of your book.  Although they are premade, usually the artist sells them only once.  You can strike gold and find a fantastic cover for about thirty bucks or so. 

 

http://www.bookcoversale.com/#!premade-book-covers/c10qz

http://www.goonwrite.com/

http://cormarcovers.wix.com/cormar-covers

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,123703.msg1837120.html#msg1837120

 

There's the custom option with photoshop art. this can go any where  from 0 bucks to gazillion bucks. Cormar does custom covers for 60 bucks, which I think is a steal for her skillset. I think you can scrounge up sixty bucks and get yourself a good custom cover. 

 

Well good luck.