This group has been designated for adults age 18 or older. Please sign in and confirm your date of birth in your profile so we can verify your eligibility. You may opt to make your date of birth private.
ROBUST discussion
Giveaways & Competitions
>
Darya the Pirate for Robust - 2 Weeks Before This Link Vaporizes
date
newest »
newest »
I grabbed a copy. Will take a look this evening.
Mod
Coolio! I'm glad you two got a copy. ^_^No, not anymore. Dropbox used to give me download details, itemized per file, but they changed that for some reason. Now it's just measured in bandwidth used per month.
Since this is a galley copy, it's currently being checked for punctuation issues. Like using a comma where a period (full stop) should be. You know, silly stuff a guy like me can do without realizing it, since I'm still afflicted with a mild case of typoitis. If there are any changes from this version to the published one, they'll be mild.
:D
I've downloaded it, but my reading queue is long, so I have no review-by date, sorry. Daniel, you should reconsider the cover. Characters on covers that look CGI make a bad impression. The stock photo of the jet is obviously that as well.
You should see my own TBR list, so I understand quite a bit about taking a while. ^_^I've started a fund to save up for, to hire a professional cover artist to redo the covers of my entire Darya series. I know the sales aren't what I would like for it, and people 'do' judge a book by its cover.
Darya and the jet both, including the backgrounds, are 100% CGI. It's the only avenue I have that I can afford, since I built the CGI myself, polygon by polygon, textured them, added the colors, etc. The Jet isn't a stock photo. I put that together myself.
As Andre would say, and rightly so, I'm too close to my own novels to truly do the covers any sense of justice.
When I browsed Shutterstock before, I came across a few models I've recognized. I was like, what? After some time went by and I was browsing the Apple iBook store, I came across the same model, used on a book cover. So I'm a little shy about using stock photos, since I could have bought the same one and made my own cover with it. I know there's millions of photos out there, but there is still a chance one day, that one of my covers will end up being the same people, just with different text.
Until I can buy the talent needed to develop one of a kind covers that run in a series, that nobody else can 'buy' for their own novels, I'm stuck with what my 3D program can render.
Just to give you all an idea just how much I can goof up, here's a blog post I made on the subject of covers for this novel. http://magicvsscience.wordpress.com/2...
Time is the only currency I have an abundance of, so one day, I may build enough skills to do some halfway decent book covers. I'm still working on that.
Mod
I have used a variety of cover artists. I find Mande Matthews reasonable (inexpensive at the time I hired her, though her prices may have changed), and have used her three times for School of the Ages books. http://mandematthews.com/
I also hired the same cover designer who does all the covers for my Indian publisher. Her name is Geetali Baruah. She is a little more expensive but has a more slick look. You can see her work on my How to Write Dialogue. She has no website, but if you want to get a quote from her, I can introduce you.
Matt, thank you for the offer. I appreciate that more than you know, but I've done the hunt for a cover artist before. My shoe-string budget is almost literal in reality. What drives up the costs is the non-human main character. No stock photo on Earth has a woman with pale skin, dark eyes, auburn hair with natural blue streaks/highlights.
Those stock photos that can be manipulated to look that way by a photoshop guru negates any savings through negotiations, because those guys aren't cheap either.
I think I'm going to have to consider covers without characters on them. Which of course, is a different pile of beans in the layout department. If I was to 'fix' all of my work, novels only, I would need to buy 8 covers for three different series. This time next year, make it 9, possibly 10.
Andre Wrote: "(meaning NOT Poser and the like)."
I hear that, I didn't like the Poser interface when I looked into it three years ago. Glad I don't use it. Between Adobe CS2, Daz 4.6 Pro, Paint.net and Reality 2.5 I am trying for the best photo realistic renders as possible. There are people out there who blow me away with Reality 2.5 by getting awesome results. If I want to learn their secrets with that crazy program, I need to fork out big bucks.
Again, the money is an issue LOL.
My cover savings fund will take another 8 months to mature enough to cover three novels. When that happens, I'll get one series handled before moving onto the next.
Mod
The investment most indies should have made was not into paying for cover art that they would never recover the cost of but into learning to do it themselves. But that's not a task to be lightly undertaken, as Daniel has been hinting, so I can understand why people shy away. Making a good cover design is in many cases much more difficult than writing a good novel; people don't grasp this because a jacket is a job for a day or a few days, and a novel takes months, but the skill levels are are not hugely different.
I have done one of my own covers (Sara Ghost). However, for the most part, I find that my efforts looks amateurish. Some people have "it" in terms of visual design, and some do not; plus, graphic design programs require a lot of training to master. There's that cost again.Sara Ghost
Mod
I know, because my own monotone design cover for REVERSE NEGATIVE won umpteen design prizes, and sold badly, while other publishers' designers did more routine stuff -- and made my name as a writer. (And didn't Daniel say something above about the writer being too close to his own work?) See http://coolmainpress.com/andrejuteboo... -- mine is the cover with the nervous Shatter font,
It is a tenet of commercial design work, including book covers, that if you win a prize, it's a consolation prize because the product under that cover won't sell...
I like that cover you designed, Andre. Actually, all three of them make me nostalgic for the books of the 70s that I saw growing up. Thanks for the kind word about the Sara Ghost cover. I did it that way because Sara has an unusual skin tone (half black, half Indian) and I couldn't find a suitable stock photo with that color, so I used a Caucasian and removed the color).
I have said before, and I'll say it again. I love you guys here at Robust, like brothers and sisters. I've missed some truly epic moments, and I've stirred the pot a little on my own.
Still, love is a multiple-defined emotion that resides behind the left eyebrow. I know, we always feel it in our chest, or butterflies in the stomach, or a warm glow in your lungs... all directed by a little creature who lives behind your left eyebrow. Sorry, I'm creeping out my keyboard...
Here is a dropbox link to my only Galley copy, in PDF format, for Darya the Pirate. Grab it, save it, read it in a few years, it's all good. It won't publish for another few weeks yet, but you can grab it here:
(Vaporized Link)
Download it, because that link vanishes in two weeks. Straight up Science Fiction and Fantasy.
I only had one beta reader for it, and here is the link to that public back and forth between us, if you want to know just how much work we poured into it. ^_^
http://magicvsscience.wordpress.com/b...
This is hardcore Science Fiction, please grab your free copy and enjoy, if you like that type of thing. :)