Sometimes Endless Effort Can Compensate For Lack of Skill

3/17/2015

I have no artistic talent. None.

But I've decided not to let something like that stop me from making bookcovers. Now I've been at this self-publishing game for a couple years now. And I've bought a lot of covers. I've seen how they are put together in photoshop and I've watched people make them. So I've decided to make covers for all the stories in the Dog Tags anthology. I've gotten two done so far and I'm very proud of them and want to show them off. Of course, part of my affliction is being incredibly proud of anything I've made no matter how bad it looks. Exhibit A.

But here are the covers I made so far. I think the biggest thing that's helping is to just keep it simple.

2 Comments

amelia link

3/16/2015 10:46:32 pm

I agree, keeping it simple is the way to go. I do have some artistic training, and still I find the best covers are just a great image with well placed text. I personally don't care for the photohopped-together covers that are so common. Like two people whose bodies fade into a city skyline with some other random element that presumably is from the story floating around in there. Just looks weird to me. I'd rather have one clean image.
Though finding that one image is often a struggle...

Love the covers you've done here!
:)

Kayci Morgan

3/17/2015 06:04:52 pm

Thanks. I actually like the multiple people staring off in the distance, skyline/meadow/farm covers that are so popular right now. But they take A LOT of photoshop skill to do well, so people attempting to do it without that skill just make crappy looking ones.

So it's better to stick with simple covers if you don't have much experience. But at the same time finding stock images for our genre is a buttpain.

Sometimes Endless Effort Can Compensate For Lack of Skill

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