Random Thursday: Book Covers
Apr. 7th, 2016 07:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjThis isn't technically a writing post, which would belong on Tuesday…hey, I can make the rules and I can break them, but they give structure to my life.
As I've mentioned on a regular basis, one of my goals for this year is to turn my "skinsinger" stories from the Sword and Sorceress anthologies into an e-book collection, in combination with the new, unpublished story "Hidebound". And the project chronology is such that, several months ago, I began the process of making queries to potential cover artists. (I've actually been scouting out ideas for over a year.) Having received no response at all to the first query I sent out several months ago, last night I sent out another to a different artist (and, in fact, the one who was first on my dream-list).
People keep telling me "don't self-reject" and there's an odd twist to that in this process. In both queries, I've felt the need to mention that--as a self-published project--I feel like I'm "playing out of my league" in contacting the artist in question. I guess that's just a hair this side of self-rejection, because I did, in fact, send the query. But in both cases I've been contacting a "name" artist, without having any idea what their policy is regarding commissions of my sort, much less what their price range would be.
If I were trying to make a living as a writer, trying to line up cover art at this level wouldn't even be an option. And my self-doubt in contacting "name" artists comes from the worry that--regardless of the money involved--they wouldn't see the association with my project as a net positive. (That's what my imagination fills in for that first non-response: "You aren't even worth the time it would take to send a return e-mail to decline.") But I feel that, in order to show respect for my own work, it's important to treat the whole package with respect. One of the most obvious off-putting aspects of a self-published book for me is if the author clearly hasn't considered the cover presentation to be an important part of communication with the potential readership.
And the dynamics are peculiar. My reflexes are all coming from the fiction submission process: no simultaneous submissions, get a clear "no" before moving on, view the recipient of the query as having all the power over the decision. And yet, from another point of view, I am the purchaser, the one with the ultimate power to say "I want your material for my publication", the one plunking down the money for the rights to someone's work. I'm still working out how to integrate those reflexes. And, of course, it's going to be obvious from my queries that I have absolutely no experience with this process. The artists I'm contacting might reasonably be wary of committing to an investment of their time under those circumstances.
So, in a way, the cover art process is also a part of my personal/professional growth. It could go in multiple directions. I just might get my dream cover from my dream artist and be able to use that as a part of my enthusiastic promotion of the final product. Or I might go through multiple iterations of simply being ignored (read: dismissed unconsidered), as I slowly work my way from "dream artist" down to "well, they'd do an ok job" and then eventually give up because the deadlines are bearing down and I'm scrambling to put something together on my own because, after all, who can you really rely on in the end but yourself? [Oops, wrong path through the dark woods.]
I have no idea how any of this looks from the artist's point of view.
As I've mentioned on a regular basis, one of my goals for this year is to turn my "skinsinger" stories from the Sword and Sorceress anthologies into an e-book collection, in combination with the new, unpublished story "Hidebound". And the project chronology is such that, several months ago, I began the process of making queries to potential cover artists. (I've actually been scouting out ideas for over a year.) Having received no response at all to the first query I sent out several months ago, last night I sent out another to a different artist (and, in fact, the one who was first on my dream-list).
People keep telling me "don't self-reject" and there's an odd twist to that in this process. In both queries, I've felt the need to mention that--as a self-published project--I feel like I'm "playing out of my league" in contacting the artist in question. I guess that's just a hair this side of self-rejection, because I did, in fact, send the query. But in both cases I've been contacting a "name" artist, without having any idea what their policy is regarding commissions of my sort, much less what their price range would be.
If I were trying to make a living as a writer, trying to line up cover art at this level wouldn't even be an option. And my self-doubt in contacting "name" artists comes from the worry that--regardless of the money involved--they wouldn't see the association with my project as a net positive. (That's what my imagination fills in for that first non-response: "You aren't even worth the time it would take to send a return e-mail to decline.") But I feel that, in order to show respect for my own work, it's important to treat the whole package with respect. One of the most obvious off-putting aspects of a self-published book for me is if the author clearly hasn't considered the cover presentation to be an important part of communication with the potential readership.
And the dynamics are peculiar. My reflexes are all coming from the fiction submission process: no simultaneous submissions, get a clear "no" before moving on, view the recipient of the query as having all the power over the decision. And yet, from another point of view, I am the purchaser, the one with the ultimate power to say "I want your material for my publication", the one plunking down the money for the rights to someone's work. I'm still working out how to integrate those reflexes. And, of course, it's going to be obvious from my queries that I have absolutely no experience with this process. The artists I'm contacting might reasonably be wary of committing to an investment of their time under those circumstances.
So, in a way, the cover art process is also a part of my personal/professional growth. It could go in multiple directions. I just might get my dream cover from my dream artist and be able to use that as a part of my enthusiastic promotion of the final product. Or I might go through multiple iterations of simply being ignored (read: dismissed unconsidered), as I slowly work my way from "dream artist" down to "well, they'd do an ok job" and then eventually give up because the deadlines are bearing down and I'm scrambling to put something together on my own because, after all, who can you really rely on in the end but yourself? [Oops, wrong path through the dark woods.]
I have no idea how any of this looks from the artist's point of view.
