Cover design DIY

Reader question time! For some of my books, I commission covers, and for others I make the covers myself. About that, Michael asks:

“If you don’t mind me asking, what determines if you provide the cover art yourself, or commission an artist to do so? Is it a financial calculation based on your estimate of likely sales/costs?”

Basically, it boils down to three factors: 1.) Cost, 2.) Scheduling, and 3.) Will I give this book away for free or not?

Before I get into those, I should mention that I am confident in my ability to produce a reasonable cover. Like, I’m not Great, merely Adequate, and I wouldn’t hire out to make covers for other people. But I can make a cover I’m happy with using photos I buy off stock image sites, and some of the covers I’ve made have been attached to books that have been #1 in their categories on Amazon US at various times.

To make a cover, I license suitable photos off stock image sites, making sure to pick photos that allow for 1.) unlimited electronic impressions, and 2.) model release, if the picture features a human model. Then I make the cover using GIMP on Ubuntu, since 1.) GIMP is free, and 2.) GIMP runs a lot smoother on Linux than it does on Windows. I try to follow the Rule of Thirds and choose appropriate foreground/background colors while making a cover.

I realize, of course, that this isn’t an option for many writers, or even for most writers. (You can always tell when an author designed his own covers when he really shouldn’t have.) GIMP has a learning curve like Mount Everest, and it’s taken me a couple of years of practice to be able to make my own covers. Of course, I’m a lot better at cover design than I was eight years ago, and sometimes the best way to learn something is to fail repeatedly while getting slightly better with each iteration.

As for deciding on whether or not to make my own cover or hire someone to do it, here’s how I make the decision.

-Cost. A good cover can cost a couple hundred bucks, sometimes more. Will the book earn it back? I always make my own covers for short stories because it’s rare for a short story to sell more than a few hundred copies.

-Scheduling time. Really good cover designers are booked months in advance. Given how far out in advance I plan out my series, this usually isn’t a problem, but if I need to make a cover right now, I can do it myself.

-Will I give this book away for free? If I’m planning to give a book away for free via my newsletter, I’ll do the cover myself. (This is another reason why I make the short story cover images myself.)

Finally, I would say that I prefer to hire out covers over making them myself. I’m pretty good with the mechanics of GIMP, but I don’t have any eye for aesthetics. That said, knowing how to make my own covers has been really useful and saved me a lot of money, so I’m glad I learned how to do it.

If you want to get started learning how to use GIMP, I strongly recommend THE ARTIST’S GUIDE TO GIMP by Michael Hammel.

-JM