Several yeasr ago I Ben Bova’s book about writing. As a professional and very successful sci-fi writer, Bova had some surprising advice: Never join a small writing group (unless it was being taught by a professional writer). Second, don’t allow your friends or family members give you advice unless they were really skilled writers themselves.

His reason was that most writing groups composed of amateurs are apt to give bad advice and/or be jealous and thereby tear down anyone with talent. In the end a would-be writer in such a group was apt to get discouraged and quit, or adopt poor advice that would actually hamstring his efforts. Instead, Bova suggested just ignoring critics whose advice you didn’t value, study the writing of good writers, and follow your own inclinations without bothering to see what your “peers” think about what you’re doing.

I have found this applies to artwork as well. While it is rare, I have had the misfortune to work on book cover projects where an author started asking friends, neighbors, and the family cat what they thought needed to be changed with a cover illustration. Fortunately this is rare. But when it happens, it is tragic to watch a good cover go downhill. Death by committee.

A lot of input from well-meaning folks can be anything but artistically valid. Most has negative merit

I suppose bad decisions due to majority rule is one of the terrors of a democratic society. The mistake in thinking is that if the right to vote applies to political decisions, it should be equally good at determining artistic direction.

But it seldom is. Basically it means that the direction of the creation is in the hands of the lowest common denomination within the group making “democratic” decisions.

I realize that art is always in danger of becoming a badge of elitism, as modern classical music did during the 20th Century with more and more music being produced for fewer and fewer listeners (while garage bands sold millions of records with music played to often by out-of-tune guitars).

But good art direction demands dictatorship and a willingness to go the course alone.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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