Mary Newman's Blog - Posts Tagged "cover-art"

There are times when I yearn for the good old days of a simple solid color book cover with gold or black lettered title. Doing that today, however, is practically screaming "don't buy this book" at the top of your lungs. It just isn't done and readers - especially those of a romance - expect a sexy or sweet cover complete with models.

Covers for my books have become the bane of my existence. Really.

Ordinarily, I use my own photography, generally a landscape, sunrise, moon, etc., and use the convenient build-a-cover that Create Space offers. It's easy and the covers generally come out nice, if not slightly generic, and I don't have to worry about the stock photo model appearing on someone else's cover. I've never wanted to buy stock photos for that reason.

Another reason I don't use models is that my books are fantasy romances. My characters are sometimes not exactly human, and most times are described in such a way I'm just not going to find a model who matches without applying some serious Photo-shopping. Not only do I not have that software any longer, my skills using it are so old I'm afraid they're obsolete.

My only cover that ever used models was done for me by my DIL, Corina Futrell, who lives in New Zealand. She's an excellent photographer and used a couple of friends as models. She Photo-shopped a space background and it turned out great. It's on my book "Love's Slave" and is one of my favorite covers.

This latest book I really thought deserved a professional cover and went looking for an artist. I really like the manga/yaoi-inspired artwork and thought it would be great to have an illustration of my two MCs for this cover. I've not had any luck. Those artists I've found that match the style I want are either beyond my price range or not taking commissions any longer.

I am an artist, too. I paint in acrylic, mostly landscapes. The human form is something that escapes the messages from my brain to my hand. I'd do better drawing stick figures. Add in the fact I no longer have the software on my computer or the scanner to get my artwork onto my computer and painting my own covers is just not going to happen.

So, here I sit, in a quandary about what to do. I love this story. It's one of my better ones and I really hesitate to stick it with a generic cover that doesn't convey anything within the book. I am open to suggestions...