A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk on the traditional vs. self-published experience for writers. I discussed covers, but had to stick to those with new art created by artists, since I had no experience with photo covers. If only I'd been quicker about reading the May/June 2014 SCBWI Bulletin, I would have had some good info I could have included.
In that issue, author Chris Eboch had a great article called Photo Cover Design for Self-Published Novels. She uses a case study of an author who found the main photo for her cover herself and still needed a photo artist and a designer (that's two different people, folks) to finish her cover. I mention this to make sure everyone understands how involved creating a cover is.
Finding this article will be worth the effort for anyone thinking about creating their own book cover.
This is really interesting - we're refining a panel for KidlitCon and talking about self-publishing and how bloggers can be a part of making the good books more visible (and arguing that there ARE good self-pubbed books). I wonder how local she is to the West Coast (the Con is in Sacramento) and if she'd be willing to come and sit on the panel...?
ReplyDelete(She being Chris Eboch, in case that was absolutely unclear.)
ReplyDeleteShe's in Connecticut for 5 days right now teaching at a women's writing event. I met her in 2013 at the NESCBWI conference in Massachusetts, and I believe she was at the SCBWI conference in California this summer. So she's an active teacher/presenter. I don't think it would be at all unreasonable to contact her.
ReplyDeleteI've only met her once (she led a 3 hour plotting workshop that I thought was very good), but we are Facebook friends and interact a bit. You can tell her you heard about her through my blog.
Thanks. I've actually started a tumblr highlighting self-published novels, and am trying to collect more to give people a resource for after the Con... If you'd give me a list of those that you've reviewed on your blog, too, I'll definitely add you in (somewhere on the tumblr there's a submission button but I have to figure out the parameters of what I mean by "self-published," since some small presses exist only to help with formatting, etc. I'll have to see...) ☺
ReplyDeleteThere's only one that I recall. It is worth sending you, so I'll try to get to it in the next couple of days.
ReplyDeleteI have self-published eBooks on my e-reader, waiting for me to read, but I always get distracted by other things.