THOUGHTS FROM A COVER ARTIST

I’ve been a cover artist at the Wild Rose Press almost from the beginning, as well as an author. I know how important it is for our baby to be wrapped nicely. We have ideas in our head about what makes a good cover. We describe for the artist things like this: “The heroine has emerald green eyes, short red hair, super petite, and short, with a glimmer in her eye. She’s holding sunglasses in her right hand and has a foot on a beach ball.  Her bikini is blue. The font should be Comic Sans, in blue, with a sun reflecting off the pecks of the man behind her, who is a brunette with long hair.”

This may sound wonderful in the head of a creative author, but for a cover artist… it is a moment to cringe.  We spend hours and hours looking for something remotely close to a red head, and all we can find is long hair. Or we find them, but they are all wearing business suits. The more details wanted, the harder it is to comply. And when we can’t find it, you end up with a silhouette. 

So, here are some things to note:

Understand the right artwork is hard to find, so give lots of concepts just in case.

Simpler covers often to sell better, so think less busy.

Don’t be so specific that artists will most likely never find the exact artwork (especially for vintage books)

Find covers that you like and give us links of samples (this helps for us visual people)

Know that it’s okay to let us know about a font you like, but do not expect us to have that particular font. It will likely be similar.

Understand that matching hair, clothes, etc. is difficult, so be broader.

Find out what art website we are currently using (it changes sometimes), find artwork that you like, and give us the art numbers. If we can use them, we will.

Give us location, time of year, and tone of the story. These are the most important elements to making a cover appropriate. Fill your forms completely out. If there is something really important, don’t leave it out.

Consider your title. Often the artwork the author asks for do not match the title. This is confusing for the reader.

And lastly, remember that artists work on royalties too, and really care about the success of your book. We want it to do well.

Blessings and congratulations on your publishing endeavors!

Kim Mendoza

TWRP Cover Artist

After galley.

by RJ Morris

Production Manager,

Co-Founder, VP, The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

What happens to your baby after galleys? 

You’ve worked hard, you’ve slaved over a hot computer keyboard until your eyes are red rimmed and blurry, your fingers are numb, your back aches, and your legs don’t remember what it means to stand.  Your editor, whom you’ve blessed and cursed in the same breath, finally announces that your manuscript has completed the galley stage and is ready to go to production.  

You lean back in your chair that gives an audible complaint from over use and debate on whether or not to break out the champagne or wait until you have a release date.  You decide to field the question to your editor, who gives a patient, but obviously pat answer that it could be days, perhaps weeks before a release date is decided upon.  

“Why?” you ask.  The hard part is done, the text is flawless, even your dedication, carefully crafted to include everyone in your family that supported you during this long and often painful process, including the dog, is perfect.  Why would a release date take weeks to receive? 

Well, I’ll tell you.  There are a dozen things that must take place before the rest of the world can read your wonderful prose.  Electronic devices abound in this day and age, so your story must be formatted in specific ways to display properly on these devices.  Each one has its own unique way of handling text, so a good deal of care must go into this technical process.  If your book is to be printed, other formats must be created to align with the manufacturers’ specifications.  Many days of preparation for the distribution of your book must take place.  Then once these often tedious but necessary steps are taken, a release date can then be assigned to your book.  

“Finally!” you say.  “I’ll get a date and it’ll be just around the corner.”  

Um, well no.  As you were slaving at your keyboard, there were other manuscripts moving into production, also ready for dates and final formatting.  Therefore, your story must get in line.  

“But it’s an electronic book, why can’t it go out the minute it’s complete?” 

For The Wild Rose Press, Inc., we intentionally limit the number of releases per week so that each title gets a full day in the sun (2 weeks on the front page of our website).  If we were to release stories as quickly as we received them, then your wonderful tale and its lovely cover would be but a blip on the screen.  Literally.  So we limit ourselves to an average of five per week, which puts our releases about six months away from galley completion. 

Although you are saddened by this delay, you’re a savvy author and realize this allows you the time to promote your work and gather the crowds for the unveiling of your latest book.  It will be an event to remember, and an accomplishment to be proud of. 

So although you’ve slaved away and used your vivid imagination to create this fabulous piece of work, there are invisible steps and countless people required to get your book to the top of the publishing mountain. 

I hope this has enlightened some of you, and that you might consider saying a simple thanks now and again to those invisible people who work very hard to make your book the best it can be.  And as spokesperson for the invisible people, I say, thank you, for allowing us to be a part of your publishing life. 

Cover Art From A Marketing Perspective

Every author envisions the perfect book cover with characters on the cover that the artist seemed to pluck right from your head. Mood, setting, tone—it’s going to be perfect. But wait, the cover hits your inbox and it’s nothing what you expected. Take a breath and relax.

TWRP has wonderful cover artists. With the limited information you provide on a cover request sheet, we hope you have a cover you can be proud of. What you might not know is that before it was ever sent to you, your cover has already been through an approval process. So what does marketing look for in a cover?

Every publishing company has a brand. If you look at the evolution of TWRP covers, you’ll see a progression from plain colored backgrounds with text for shorter works and side banners on every book to show the Rose Line the book is from such as Cactus Rose or Crimson Rose. To what we now have—beautiful custom cover art for every title. But now that there isn’t a banner on the side, we still want to showcase our brand of romantic fiction on our book covers. Our covers have that indefinable quality that represents the romance of a Wild Rose Press book.

But marketing also considers other qualities. Is the font easy to read? Can a reader clearly see both the title and your name? If the book is going into print, does the cover showcase well in large full sized image as well as thumb sized for digital etailers? And is the cover clean and concise enough to be recognized scaled down for some etailers? A cluttered cover, a cover that is too dark or too light won’t stand out on a website with thousands of other covers.

To go a little off topic. By the time you’re ready for a cover your book has been contracted and is probably somewhere in the editing stage and it’s a bit late for changes. So here is some advice. When you finish your story and you’re ready to submit, think about the title. A long title is going to clutter the cover. A common phrase will have dozens to hundreds of books with the same title. To give an example, I plugged Homecoming into the Kindle.com search bar and had 191 possibilities show. A title that begins with The, A, or An are going to be lost in the etailer catalog.

So when you get your cover, know that we don’t just consider the beautiful couple on a beach at sunset. But we also want a cover that reflects our publishing house and will be recognizable as your book. Your legible name and title and the overall cover are the best first impression you’ll have for your book.

Lisa Dawn

Marketing Director

What makes a good cover?

Words of wisdom from two of our amazing, talented cover artists:

It's hard to explain from a cover artist stand point what makes a good cover because designing is sort of an organic process for an artist. What I'm going to try to explain is what you should think about when requesting a cover.  As far as composition, most of the time, less is better. Trying to request a complicated cover with too many elements will make for a messy cover, kind of like trying to put to many flavors in a cake. Also, white space is your friend; don't feel like every inch of the cover needs to be covered with something, it can be a very successful cover with lots of white space.

What I would suggest when making a cover wish list is concentrate on one or two items that are central to your story line like the setting and a good description of your characters.

For example:   A contemporary suspense set in a dark alley of New York, blond heroine, dark haired hero looking pensive.  Well you get the idea.

Also, watch being too picky if the characters on the cover don't look exactly like your characters. As long as they allow the tone of your book to come through and it's attractive from a marketing standpoint, I wouldn't sweat it!  I've had authors nit-pick covers into ugliness because they want it to look exactly like their vision, but sometimes that's just not possible, so they passed up an opportunity for an amazing cover.

Artists have to work from stock art, so they likely can't get your characters exactly. Here's an example, a long haired blond man. Likely, that's just not something the artist is going to be able to find for you in stock art, but if they can have an attractive couple kissing, for example, and it makes the cover pop, I wouldn't worry if the guy doesn't have long blond hair.

So that's my short advice on making a cover great, let the artist eye for design and overall composition for marketing purposes make you cover pop. If you give them room to work that way, I guarantee your cover will rock! - From Cover Art Designer Rae Monet of Rae Monet, Inc. Design

***

I love to create covers! I love to please! But there are times when those two things concepts simply collide.

Case in point, the historical lines. The author has a grand idea of what she/he envisions for the cover.

I have spent hours in search of an auburn beauty with green-eyes, wearing a blue period gown with a sapphire pendant in her hand as part of the story.

Oh dear heavens, I can only photoshop so much, so let's get creative here, because 'I WILL NEVER FIND THAT EXACT PHOTO'. What really needs to happen is some fantastic photographers loading the stockphoto sites with vintage, historically dressed romantic figures, and not some cheesy costume party picture. Don't get me wrong, if I were a writer and had a vision, I would love to see the cover come to life, looking like the pages from my book.

What a joy when I get close and the author writes back, FABULOUS, I LOVE IT!!!! And that is where the collision erupts into a masterpiece and life if good, until the next cover! -   Tina Lynn Stout, TWRP cover artist