I not only love reading books, but also looking at their covers. Especially with new-to-me-authors cover art is a very important purchase factor.
When I was only a reader, before I was ever involved as cover artist in the actual production of a book, I imagined that the author would tell the publishers how s/he saw the cover and when there would be a photo-shoot with models and all to just accomplish that vision (i.e. in case no original art was involved). I had never heard of stock art before.
Then, during my beginnings as a cover artist for e-book publishers I discovered the whole world of stock on the internet. There were, and still are, very pricey sites like veer.com — especially when compared to what you earn as e-book cover artist. And then ones who I could afford — istockphoto.com, dreamstime.com, stockxpert.com, to name just a few.
I started to recognize the expensive images on Romance covers by NY publishing houses and dreamed of being able to work one day with the same stock, to bring the NY flair to my covers.
This dream, though stopped later as the first articles started to appear on blogs—yes, also on RTB—about how books, even ones releasing the same month, were having the same cover. The ‘recycled-cover-trend’ had arrived.
So I evolved as artist, striving more for uniqueness and creativity instead of copying what the NY pubs put on their covers. Not that I didn’t do that before, knowing that almost every other e-book cover artist—when working with photos—used the same stock resources than I did. However, the NY pubs were no longer my role model for a great cover.
Don’t get me wrong, please! There are still tons of NY covers that get me drooling! I’m not saying one is better than the other (and I don’t even want to go into an e-book/print pub discussion), just that some events altered my view on the cover art process.
While there will always be some poorly executed e-book covers, I’m very pleased to notice that the majority of e-covers today are very appealing and don’t need to take a backseat when compared to the covers created by the art departments of the big publishing houses.
Quite contrary is the fact that the e-cover artists still use the same ‘cheap’ resources, and the covers have never been better or had more variety than they do today. There are real photo magicians at work.
(And believe me, ‘cheap’ is a very subjective matter as especially lately, the most stock sites increased their prices.)
So while the e-cover industry improved their ‘looks’, the NY pubs have started to recognize—and I’m sure the economy is not a small factor here—the value of the ‘cheaper’ stock sites. After the ‘recycled-cover-look’ you now can see a new trend: Crowdsourcing! It’s not an own, to the Romance publishing world limited, phenomenon, but shows its head everywhere.
Wikipedia: “Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.”
Two very well-known Crowdsourcing cases recently have been the TIME magazine cover and the Twitter bird. You can catch up on both also here with lots of visuals.
Nowadays, when surfing the Romance section in online bookstores, I should actually be happy about the fact that I have difficulties telling e-covers from other covers apart. Unfortunately, it’s not only because the e-covers improved so much, but due to publishers using the same $6 stock images I and my fellow e-artists use, and most don’t even do it creatively.
On the one hand, I’m thankful for crowdsourcing as photographers who offer their photos up at affordable prices, giving me the opportunity to purchase the ‘basics’ for my covers. I often merge up to five different photos to create the cover the author and I are looking for. On the other hand, I’m not as happy to see bigger companies, publishers, who could afford to pay the artists more (or even get a bit more creative with the use of such widely used images), do the same, though it’s definitely the right thing in the business world, where cheap resources and fast work are appreciated, and in the end the biggest profit counts.
So please do welcome the crowdsourced-cover-trend!
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Very informative, thank you!
I understand the delight in being able to save money – who doesn’t like that – but I think that by refusing to pay artists a fair fee, you are doing everybody a disfavour.
Of course there will always be people who put their pictures (or e-books, or music) up for the love of it – so your source won’t dry up – but what you won’t get is the people who are able to devote years to learning how to produce good art *because they don’t need to work full time at something else to support themselves*.
Quite frankly, I want my favorite musicians, photographers, writers, to be able to support themselves with their art and to hone their skills without worrying how to pay the rent. That means that yes, I have to be willing to pay more per-item, but in the end, I feel I am profiting immensely by it.
*nods* There needs to be a shift in thinking, especially at top of the food chain we’ve got now: Publisher >> Cover Artist >> Stock Site >> Photographer.
Let’s take a look at istock’s new Vetta Collection that offers good art at higher prices, so the photographer can make a higher cut. For example, a print quality version of a photo comes out at 40 credits (~ $40).
I’m sure a lot cover artists would love to work with these images (and paying the photographer more) but can’t, cause they don’t even make as much.
If the publisher doesn’t start to raise the cover artist’s payment (be it royalities or flat fee or both), they won’t be able to afford the higher (and also fairer) prices of the photographers.
We could now argue that the publisher doesn’t want to spend more money on cover art, because by doing so he had to raise the book price and fears not to sell enough. However, this may only be true for small pubs. I think the creation of a cover for–let’s say–$200 instead of $100 shouldn’t worry the bigger pubs that much.
Excellent post, Frauke.
It all comes down to budgeting. But I don’t understand why publishers would want to cut corners when it comes to artwork. Especially good, highly creative artwork that can only boost product sales and recognition. With e-publishing, part of the problem in that respect is that a lot of people involved with making covers aren’t aware of what their work is really worth. So what incentive does a publisher have to properly compensate them if the company can get decent images at a mere $50 or $75? What incentive does the artist have to go out and acquire a more exclusive (and expensive) image for a profit margin of maybe 20-40%?
And so, images get recycled.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using stock images in either print or e-format–the artists and photographers who’ve contributed to sources like iStock know what they’re getting into when they license their images out. But consumers *do* notice the repetition, and if a publisher really wants their covers to work for the book and capture the imagination of readers, they need to make sure the art budget properly allows for that type of quality.
If there’s something wrong with using stock images in covers, I’d be unemployed. LOL.
I agree with everything you said.
I think my biggest beef is when the designer uses *just* the stock photo and slaps some text on the image. There are some situations where that’s what the client or author wants, but there’s not much ‘art’ to that type of cover.
Frauke,
Thanks for the informative look at how artists do it. I just posted something on my blog today about how it’s done from a writer’s POV. I recently hired Tara O’Shea to design a cover for my free serial novella, and she did a great job w/ just three stock photos. I have no idea how many were used for my epub cover though.
awesome post! i knew nothing about crowdsourcing before, but definitely have made plenty of use of the idea without knowing that i was doing it! and the article about the TIME cover image was super interesting too, thanks!
That has to be so annoying to cover artists everywhere.
Doesn’t it seem that art is always the first to suffer?
G.
Very informative, Frauke. Thanx. I have to say that some of the earlier ebook covers used to make my shudder. The quality has come a long way in just a few years.
Great post, Frauke. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I learned something new.
Cowboy Love,
Natalie Acres