Deborah Cooke: Author

This week on Wild West Thursday, I thought we’d take a look at how the current changes in the publishing world are affecting cover art and cover artists. We talk a lot about the effects upon writers and even upon publishers, but as writers, we have a lot in common with the other creative people involved in the process of publishing a book.

Once upon a time, I met an artist who had done a number of cover illustrations for my books. She also read my books and enjoyed them, and I loved the illustrations she had done. We had a little bit of a mutual admiration society going, which was why we met for a coffee. I had no idea how artists worked with publishing companies before that discussion, but it turned out that her relationship with my publisher was similar to mine. She worked with the art director, while I worked with my editor, but both of us contracted work with the house, both of us had representation to negotiate our contract terms, and both of us had similar patterns of review and revision with the house. Both of us worked freelance. I thought that was pretty interesting.

So, in the traditional publishing model, cover artists work in a similar way to writers. They are contracted to do the cover illustration for a particular book, after negotiation over the price, the rights and the delivery schedule. The big difference is that artists – or their representatives – present their portfolio to the art director, who then commissions specific artists for specific books. Each artist has a style of working, and the art director tries to make an effective pairing, evoking the tone of the author’s book with the cover illustration. Once contracted, the artist may create a number of sketches or interpretations of the final cover, the art director chooses a creative direction, and the artist creates the work.

Traditionally, a cover artist supplied the illustration for the full cover. The art department at the publishing house added the type to create the cover and formatted the cover (with trim marks, bleeds, etc.) for printing. In the olden days, the cover illustration would have been a commissioned painting, but increasingly it is photographic (although the photograph may be manipulated.) This is still how the process works at most big publishing houses. These artists tend to be quite expensive to hire, and one of the reasons is that they may do custom photo shoots for each cover. This is how the artist Tony Mauro does the Dragonfire covers, for example. Tony does custom photo shoots, the art director chooses one (or maybe several), then Tony modifies the image, adding background and other details, and presents the illustration to the house. It is a custom commission. The publisher adds all the type and prepares the cover for printing.

One of the biggest changes for cover artists in this new Wild West is that the artist creating a cover for a digital book is often expected to do the type in addition to the illustration, and present a finished cover to the client. That’s particularly the case with indie publishing, when the author wants a finished cover for his or her money, preferably in a number of pre-set sizes and resolutions. Indie authors also have less money to spend than big publishing houses and they tend to work on a shorter timeline. It may also be the case at a small press or a digital-first press.

As a result of this, a new crop of cover artists have appeared in recent years who are adept with Photoshop. They work at much lower prices and provide a finished cover. Their pricing means that they don’t do custom photo shoots – they tend to use stock photography, which can be licensed quite cheaply for this purpose. Several of them take their own stock photos, not just for their own uses but to sell to other cover artists.

To compare and contrast, an artist doing the illustration only for a traditional publishing house would charge anywhere between $2000 and $10000 for that image, which would probably be licensed only for use on that specific edition of that specific book. Many of these artists also sell prints and other merchandise carrying the images they’ve created because they retain the rights to the image itself.

In contrast, I pay about $200 to the artists who create my digital covers – that includes not just the type, but also the print on demand cover and its preparation for printing. This is a pretty average price. There are artists who work for less and those who charge more, but generally, it’s tough to spend $1000 as an indie on a cover, even including the POD version.

That’s a big price difference. As a result, I expect there is a similar division in the realm of cover artists as in the ranks of writers. There will be established artists who have worked in the business for decades and have established contacts who can continue as previously. There will be new-kids-on-the-block who are getting a foot in the door by doing indie covers and building their portfolio, and some of them are doing quite well. And there will be artists in the middle, maybe who mix and match between markets, or choose to redefine themselves on the new digital frontier.

Just as there are barriers to entry for authors who want to go indie – learning about formatting and distribution, for example, as well as hiring service providers for editing etc. – there are barriers to entry for artists going digital. Artists who have not previously set the type for the cover would need to learn a whole suite of new skills (type design is not easy to master) as well technical abilities in order to sell to this growing niche of indie publishing authors – and they will be expected sell their work at much lower prices. I would expect few to find this change enticing, just as few established authors find it enticing to forgo an advance. But as stock photos become more numerous (and better) and publishing margins are squeezed ever tighter, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before even the big houses turn to this new breed of cover artist. The artists I use for my digital covers already do work for New York print publishing houses. The transition has already begun.

Next week, we’ll talk about changes to the cover art itself that are the result of the evolving digital book market.

But let’s talk about cover art for a minute today. What kind of cover art do you prefer? Do you prefer paintings and illustrations over photographs? Do you have any pet peeves about covers? (Pretty much everybody does!) Do you think it’s important for a cover to have a unique image, or can it just be distinctive? Do you like people on romance novel covers or not?