Indie publishing (also known as self-publishing) has been around for quite a long time, and with the introduction of ebooks and print-on-demand, it is a legitimate and growing industry. Here at Speculative Chic, we’ve featured a number of indie authors, both as guests and on our list of regular contributors, so we thought we’d give some information on how it all works. If you’re a reader, you might find it interesting. If you’re a writer who’s considering indie publishing, there will be a lot you’ll want to know (and some things you don’t even know you want to know!).
Being an indie means wearing a lot of hats and being able to shift among different roles, all necessary to the overall job of being an authorprenuer.
This month, we’re going to start talking more in-depth about the folks who will be on your team and things you’ll want to take into consideration when choosing them.
Indie Pub Journey posts:
- Before You Write
- Deciding What to Write
- Things to Do While You Write
- Finding Your Cover Artist (this post)
IndiePub Team: Assemble!
Last month, I listed out a number of folks whom you might find on an indie author’s team, from artists to editors to readers and other pros. Let’s dig in to what considerations you’ll want to think about when choosing these partners. Remember that having all of these on your team may not be necessary. You have to balance your needs with your budget, taking into consideration what skills you have and don’t have.
I’m going list a few places here where you can find many different types of professionals, that way I’m not repeating websites in each section. These sites are basically places pros can advertise their work. Some lists are curated, in that the website itself checks to make sure the pros actually are pros. Some lists are not curated at all and anyone can post, so make sure you’re looking at reviews and doing your due diligence.
This month we’re going to start with cover artists!
Cover Artists vs. Graphic Designers
Graphic artists and cover designers are two different things, though many artists do both.
A graphic designer will help you with your logo, images for your website, advertising graphics, and even images for swag and merchandise. So a designer is more about bigger-picture branding images.
A cover artist is about branding a particular book or series to have the look and feel you want to convey, including being in line with your overall branding.
If you’re just starting out, you may not need a graphic artist, unless you’re really clear on the branding you want to put out there. But you’ll definitely need a cover artist, so we’ll talk more about that.
Choosing a Cover Artist
When choosing a cover artist, you need to think about your overall plan — are you writing a stand-alone or a series? — and your genre.
If you’re writing a series, you need consistency among the covers. Readers should be able to look at them and know they all go together. That can mean similar color palettes, the same figure on each cover, similar effects among the covers, and the same typography.
Your cover artist should understand the reader’s visual expectations of the genre. Each genre is different in what the readers want. If you’re writing military science fiction, you better have a soldier and maybe some mech-style machine on the cover or an alien planet, etc. If you’re writing sweet romance, you’re going to have a woman, maybe a man, maybe some flowers or other elements of traditional romance. Your cover artist needs to know how to create a cover that’s going to sell your book to the readers of your genre.
Remember that a cover isn’t meant to be an exact representation of your book. It’s a marketing tool. Its job is to get the reader’s attention enough to click on the link and read your description, which will hopefully lead them to buy your book. So focus more on the way it draws a reader in and less on whether it’s exactly like your book.
Saving money on covers
Covers are not cheap. You can pay $100 for a pre-made and anywhere from $300 to $1000 or more for a custom cover. The cost is commensurate with the importance of it in your overall business plan, which is why it’s important that you decide, early on, how much money you have to invest in your business and then divide that amount appropriately among your expenses. That said, there are some ways to get a great cover when cost is a factor (as it almost always is, right?).
You can purchase pre-made book covers where all the elements are in place and the artist just adds your name and title to the book. This is a really good way to get economical covers, though it may be challenging to make an entire series consistent with pre-mades. You can definitely get the first pre-made though, and negotiate with the artist for additional covers with the same styling.
If you choose to go the pre-made route, make sure the artist will remove the cover from the marketplace once you’ve purchased it. It would be really awkward to find your cover on a different title with a different author.
Another way to save money is to purchase multiple covers at once. This does require that you know the titles of all of the books beforehand and to pay for all of them up front, but you have the opportunity to save a lot of money if you can do this. This is especially good if you’ve written several of the books before publishing, because then you’ll have both title and length (which is important when ordering paperback covers).
Where to find cover art
In addition to the links above, here are some cover-specific sites:
99 Covers
SelfPub Book Covers
99 Designs
Damonza
Other ways to find cover artists
Think outside the box.
I found my cover artist for the Soul Cavern series when I was listening to the Creative Penn podcast years ago. Sylvia Frost was a guest, and I really enjoyed what she had to say about her philosophy of cover art. There are lots of great indie publishing podcasts you can listen to for all kinds of great advice and lines to some incredible pros!
Another way to do it is to look at books with covers you like and represent the genre you write in. You’ll need to do this anyway, to make sure your cover is genre-appropriate. Authors often thank their cover artists in the acknowledgments or give credit on the copyright page, and you can usually see those in the Sneak Peek on Amazon if you can’t afford to buy all the books.
Keep Writing!
Remember, your job is to finish the book! You can do all the research on team members while you are creating your amazing work of art, so be sure to keep on writing!
In our next installment, we’ll be looking at the difference among editorial professionals — developmental editors, copyeditors, proofreaders, etc., and how to choose one for yourself.
I’ll be continuing this series on my Patreon page. For the price of a venti frappucino per month, Patrons get posts about publishing and marketing, along with the rewards for the lower tiers (including content about writing, sneak peeks of upcoming stories, etc.). Come join me!
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