I’m sitting here at my writing desk, getting ideas. That’s not so unusual, but today they’re all about cover artwork. I’ve published a few ebooks now, and it strikes me that a new avenue for illustrators is at hand. I’ve created the cover art for several of my ebooks, but I’m getting a little weary of the process. Click on the cover at right to inspect an example of my best work to date. Not bad, but a pro could have done better. And I’d rather be churning out the prose and letting a real professional artist create the pretty pictures to go with it. That’s a nice notion, but not presently something that I can count on, because my production budget is zero. For major publishers, it’s no big deal to plunk down thousands of dollars for a cover painting, but that just isn’t in the picture for the titles I choose to release the ebook way.
Still, I’d love to have a real artist do my covers, but how? I’ve had a vague idea for a while that’s beginning to flesh out in my mind. Much like MP3 music, the cover art of an ebook is low resolution, typically 600 dots wide by 800 dots high (the size of the image you saw if you clicked the thumbnail above). I keep thinking, if an artist were to GIVE me a 600 by 800 dot version of his/her work for my cover, but retain all rights to sell higher resolution versions, couldn’t a mutual cottage industry emerge? The artist’s work with prominent signature could appear on my ebook’s cover, and a link inside the book could send my readers to the artist’s site.
Somewhere in here is a workable model, especially for new and unknown artists. Think about it. As I promote and sell my ebook, I’d be promoting the artist’s work as well. There are plenty of artists out there right now selling multiple giclée prints of the same painting, via websites or at art or science fiction conventions. If one of them were to bet on one of my stories and give me the right to use a 600 by 800 dot version of a piece of artwork, suppose my book went viral and sold a million copies? The artist gets no royalties, but the flow of visitors to that artist’s web site would go up dramatically.
I’ve never heard of this particular model for an artist-writer alliance, so let’s say “you heard it here first.” Perhaps you will have “heard it here last,” as well, if there is some hole in the logic.
But I think the idea might just fly. Anyone want to give it a try? Speaking of flying, I’m developing the cover for a new story I’m about to release entitled “Riding Quetzalcoatlus.” A cover painting of a cowgirl with lasso flying on the back of the big pterodactyl would be appreciated.
Otherwise, said the little red hen, I’ll have to do it myself. Just remember, at the end of that story, who got to eat all the bread?
