Book Cover Illustrations

From time to time folks ask for advice about getting into the illustration business. I might not be the best person to ask since I sort of came in through the back door, starting as a writer/illustrator who could “package” his own technical books so the publisher didn’t need to hire a photographer or illustrator to finish the manuscript.

That said, right now is a tough time to be entering the illustration business. Of course historically I suppose one might argue there’s never been a good time (it has never paid too well and there’s always a lot of competition). But with the economy currently a bit shaky, the old saw about “keeping your day job” is still good advice, at least until you’ve had time to build a quality client list.

So what are my “secrets” to landing jobs in the magazine and book illustration business? Well, they’re likely the “open secrets” that most folks have already heard. But just in case:

1) Create a quality portfolio of illustrations that reflect the type of work you want to do and which you do well. Have PDF and print versions of your portfolio ready to go when someone asks for them, and be ready to tailor your portfolio toward the needs of potential clients.

2) Create a good web presence that can attract clients; a web version of your portfolio should be on your site. Avoid web sites where you’re basically competing against other illustrators or where advertising pops up along with your illustrations. You should own the site, and ideally it will have your name associated with it so anyone looking for you can quickly find you.

3) From time to time contact potential clients in the magazine and book publishing arena; be persistent — but not a pain in the posterior. When in doubt, it’s better to contract presses a little less often than to have an editor or art director groan when they see your mail or email in the “in box.” Most art directors still prefer “print mail” but more and more are coming around to email contact.

4) Be able to deliver your finalized illustrations in a digital format. If you work with traditional media, that’s fine — just be prepared to alter it and (when it’s completed) to convert it to a digital format for quick delivery to your client. (Generally presses want low-compression JPG, TIF, or — more rarely — a Photoshop file. The RGB palette is becoming more and more popular with the CMYK – never looking very good on monitors – being asked for less and less these days.)

5) “Haunt” sites like LinkedIn where you can read and have professional discussions with other pros about the ins and outs of the business. Don’t make comments at these sites unless you will appear professional in doing so. Don’t play “look at what I just did” more than perhaps once a month, or you’ll wear out your welcome.

6) Don’t waste a lot of money on software or equipment if you want to create digital artwork. I do almost all my work on an old version of Corel PhotoPaint (currently version 8); with a little effort, I could do the same thing with Photoshop, Paint, or perhaps even Paintshop Pro. Upgrading software just wastes time and money – and often leaves you slower at your work as you learn new commands and layout. New versions of today’s software by and large offer few improvements. (And I should note that use PhotoPaint because I find it faster to use and cheaper to buy, not necessarily because it is better than this or that program.) I occasionally use a really old copy of Vue (purchased for very little). You don’t need to shell out big bucks to get into digital work.

7) For digital work, the only real “essentials” in the way of hardware are a quality monitor and a digital tablet; Wacom is currently head and shoulders around its competition when it comes to tablets. Obviously the faster the computer and the more memory, the faster the work. But you don’t need a cutting edge system to do good work.

I think if an illustrator has some real talent, following this advice over several year’s time will get them to where they want their career to be.

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Duncan Long has worked as a freelance writer and book 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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Another of the B&W book illustrations I created for Victor Thorn’s upcoming book, Reality Bomb.

The illustration is titled Forsake All Hope Ye Who Enter Here — with the phrase appearing in tiny print on one of the windows as well.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book illustrator who has done work 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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Second opinions can be good.

They can also be disastrous.

When it comes to second opinions, sometimes an illustrator’s clients can be the client’s own worse enemies. That’s the reason I always shudder when I hear a client start a statement with, “I asked my [son, secretary, neighbor] what they thought about the book illustration and they said…”

Now don’t get me wrong.

Often the advice offered will be good.

But sometimes the person consulted will feel that they are required to make suggested changes and will simply grasp at straws to come up with some suggested change. They come up with something – but not necessarily something that really needs to be changed.

So the first question you should ask if you’re trying to assess the merit of a cover design or book illustration should never be, “What needs to be changed?” but rather “Is this working for my story concept?”

Only if there’s a “No” answer should proposed changes be asked for.

Poor suggestions and comments will head a client in the wrong direction and perhaps even doubt the abilities of the person they’ve so enthusiastically hired for the job just days before, and doubt their own taste as well. The cover that they loved suddenly is transformed into something less pleasing — not because of the client’s feelings but because someone else has made a negative comment about it. And once that occurs, it more or less casts the client (and the artist) adrift at sea because the standard for quality is no longer in the eye of the artist or the client but handed over to whoever happens to give the last critique of the cover concept.

Here’s the thing: Second opinions are only good when the person offering that opinion is really qualified to do so.

Just as you wouldn’t get a second opinion on your upcoming brain surgery from a plumber (I hope, at least) but rather from another skilled surgeon, you should also only get a second opinion regarding a book design and the artistic merit of the illustration from someone who is a skilled artist in their own right (and whose art is of a similar style to what is being pursued for the book cover design).

Any other advice is as likely as not to send you in the wrong direction. And leave the artist you hired loathing the changes that transform a promising design into something mediocre.

One of my favorite quotations: “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” There’s an important truth to this when it comes to picking a book cover illustration and designing the cover layout. Someone should have the final say, and if you are in charge of the book cover, then that someone should be you. You should have the vision to know where the project should be headed. Because once a committee is assembled for input, things can go downhill in a hurry and the vision be lost.

Getting second opinions can be the first step toward assembling such a committee and clients who are spending their money for a book cover illustration or design should think long and hard before asking someone for advice.

Otherwise, a poor second opinion may kill your quality book cover concept just as surely as having your plumber recommend putting a six-inch length of copper pipe into your head instead of fooling with that expensive surgery thingy.

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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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I had the pleasure of hearing from Victor Thorn (talk show host, reporter, and writer). He wanted to use 32 of my pictures in his upcoming book, Reality Bomb. I was happy to see so many of my illustrations getting exposure in his upcoming book (and a little cash in the exchange didn’t hurt anything, either, of course).

The pictures Thorn will be using are basically black and white (actually grayscale) versions of some of my color illustrations. The catch comes in translating the color into B&W since most pictures tend to be weighted toward one or another color.

That means simply hitting the “grayscale” or “desaturate” option in your software works on a very few pictures — but not for most. Instead it’s necessary to determine what the predominate color is, which color should become blackest and so forth. So what at first seems pretty straightforward is a bit more complex than one might suppose if the results are to look good. Then the range of brightness is adjusted so the lightest section becomes white and the darkest, black.

It can be a bit tedious, but fortunately the computer and software make it considerably faster than those good old days of burning, dodging, and chemical baths.

Above is one of the illustrations (The Magic Contact) that went through the conversion especially well, I think, keeping its dreamy quality without losing any of the details of the original. Except, of course, the color.

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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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From time to time I get questions from self-publishing authors about books and ISBNs, so I thought I might address it here in my blog.

The ISBN ( International Standard Book Number) was created so that books could be easily identified through computer systems worldwide. Originally made with a 10-digit number, it was later changed to 13 to better accommodate the growing numbers of books being printed around the globe.

The first digit gives the nation the book is published in, the next group belongs to the publisher, and then the unique number for the book. The last digit is a check-sum number (or in some cases a letter) that determines whether or not mistakes were made in entering the previous digits. Often a second bar code will appear with the ISBN; this secondary code will contain the retail price and currency for the book.

In theory a separate ISBN is needed for each edition or format of a book. Thus the same title should have a different ISBN for its ebook edition, hard cover, and soft cover. In practice, some publishers use one ISBN for all three — and undoubtedly cause no little confusion for book sellers. For this reason it’s best to have a different ISBN for each version of the book. Also, a new edition of a title should have a new ISBN (and a new ISBN for each format as well).

Many nations offer ISBNs for free, though there are corporations that may purchase these and resell them, so often a novice will need to dig a little to find the free government sources. In the US our government seems to have turned our ISBNs to a private corporation with ISBNs now being sold for a hefty price (if anyone knows a way to circumvent what appears to me to be a government-granted monopoly, I would appreciate hearing from you).

Some companies working with self-publishers will also offer free ISBNs through there printing services. The only possible catch here is that because ISBNs can’t be transferred from a publisher to another entity, technically the book is published by the company rather than the author, and that press will be listed as the publisher rather than the author in book catalogs and so forth.

For most self publishers this makes little difference. But if you dream of starting your own little press and hope to expand it into a publishing empire over the years, then you need to start with your own block of ISBNs rather than using the number of another press.

You can obtain one ISBN at a time, but getting them in blocks can save time (and, in the US, money). The only catch is that once you have a block it must be associated with only a single publisher. That means if you have 100 ISBNs you can’t give three to an author friend, four to another self-publisher, and so forth (unless they’re willing to publish under the name the ISBN was originally issued to).

It is possible to change the name of the company the ISBNs were issued to, but they must all remain in one block, associated with that entity.

When the POD (print on demand) CreateSpace operation was purchased by Amazon.com, the company decided to circumvent the trouble and expense of obtaining ISBNs for each of its self-publishing authors and came up with the ASIN (Amazon.com Standard Identification Number).

The ASIN currently works only within the CreateSpace/Amazon.com empire. But since Amazon.com is a huge market in and of itself, an ASIN might be sufficient for many self-publishers. And there has been talk that other book computer systems might one day accommodate the ASIN, and that would seem a strong possibility given the clout Amazon.com has gained in the marketplace. But it hasn’t happened yet and might never.

That means if you plan on marketing your book to Barnes & Noble or any other book seller outside the Amazon.com arena, an ASIN is pretty much worthless. You’ll need an ISBN in order to be entered into other book seller’s computerized systems.

Another plus of having your own ISBN is that you can print your title with LightningSource or other POD in addition to CreateSpace. You can’t do that if you have a CreateSpace number which will basically “stay” within the CreateSpace system.

The ISBN number needs a bar code for the back cover of your book. While there are companies and software that will do this for you — for a price — you can also generate these for free. Three online pages that will handle this for you are: http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/,
http://www.barcodephp.com/1d/demo/html/isbn.php, and http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/.

While it’s possible to use a high-quality bit-map for your bar code (at least 300 dots per inch), having a vector bar code is a much better option because the bar codes created will be as sharp as possible and thus easier for scanners to read.

The ISBN and its bar code normally go on the back cover of a book, and are generally places on the lower right. However you may see these in about any position these days, with the lower center also becoming more common. (I personally prefer the tradition placement on the lower right with the name and address of the publisher on the lower left of the back cover.)

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Duncan Long often helps self publishers create their book covers. Long has created book cover designs and cover illustrations for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See samples of his book cover design work at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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The last couple of weeks a number of my books (and those of many other authors) have been appearing at a variety of pirate sites. Nothing new here, but still troubling given that I never see a penny from such downloads — and it is possible to see declining sales that parallel the downloading of these stolen titles. (Don’t write to tell me that these pirated books translate into more sales – they don’t, I’ve been watching my own numbers and know better.)

I often wonder if those pirating books understand what they’re doing.

While big time writers may have lots of money to absorb losses incurred from pirated books, that’s not true for the rest of those writing today. Writers are lucky to even pay the bills with the money they make from writing, let alone save any for retirement, nice clothes, or other things many take for granted when working regular jobs. It often is a labor of love that requires “moonlighting” with another job to make ends meet.

Writers make a lot of sacrifices and it’s the least you can do to pay for their efforts rather than basically stealing from their pocket — which is just what pirated books do. If you enjoy a book, and want to see that author write more books like it, then you should pay him for his work.

That said, it always amazes me how the thieves (and that’s what they are when they post copyrighted books) who put books online for folks to download seem to think what they’re doing is okay and doesn’t hurt anyone – and then get belligerent they become when asked to stop distributing the title. In other words, they get upset because you have the audacity to ask them to quit stealing from you.

Perhaps the most ironic thing is that pirated books are hurting the publishing industry — perhaps even to the point of killing off the mid-list writers in the publishing industry since even a little profit drained out of that area makes it less than worthwhile for both the publisher and the writer to continue to produce books.

Barbarians of the past understood they were destroying and looting, bringing an end to culture. These modern barbarians remain woefully ignorant of how economics work, and of the ramifications of their theft over time. Most delude themselves into thinking they’re doing a wonderful thing for the masses; all the while these misinformed souls are actually killing the industry that produced the books they want to read.

I’m reminded of like the story of the whore who shot her lover and then explained to the police, “But I loved him.”

Likewise, today’s book pirates are busy killing the publishing industry they claim love.

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When not griping about pirates, 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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I recently sold “Nuked” for use as the cover on John Backus’ post-apocalyptic adventure novel Hunter – After the Fall.

I created this illustration a long time ago, and it has always been a (somewhat chilling) favorite, perhaps reflecting the fears of those of us who grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, a possibility that lurked in the dark like the Boogeyman in the closet.

It’s nice the illustration finally has a home. I’m betting the novel will do a little terrifying of its own, taking up where the cover leaves off, and perhaps playing the part of the Boggeyman in the reader’s subconscious.

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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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One of Richard Thieme’s science fiction short stories “Northward into the Night” from Mind Games (published April 2010 under the Duncan Long Publications imprint) is now available for a “free read” at nycBigCityLit.com.

The illustration (above) was been used in its black-and-white version to illustrate the story in the book. A color version graces the story at the nycBigCityLit.com site (with a full-size color picture to be found if you follow the link from the smaller illustration appearing with the story).

The illustration originally was a “for fun” picture entitled “Love’s Sorrow’s.” Like many other such illustrations I’ve done, this one struck an author’s fancy and Thieme felt it fit his science fiction story perfectly — so the illustration found a home first the book and now with the short story taken from that book.

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Duncan Long is a freelance book and magazine illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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I just completed the artwork for Right Hand Reign’s “Rattle of Bones” CD album cover.

I “painted” thousands of skeletons during the process, a task that would have been impossible without computer automation of the task. In fact there are only 12 different “lying down” skeletons with an additional seven or eight in various states of rising from the dead. Fortunately our brains have trouble seeing that there are only a limited number of variations when the arrangement becomes this complex, so the illusion is created that the bones are in an entirely random pattern rather than just being a very limited number.

After the basic groups were created, the bones were “sprayed” into position on the hillsides with a random distribution setting on the software.

The picture concept for the album is loosely based on the biblical account of the valley of dried bones. We started with a moonlit night and the hillsides covered with bones.

While the moonlit version of the illustration proved beautiful in a somewhat chilling sort of way, it was too “Gothic” for the CD album cover (the band is a Christian group), so I altered the night scene into a sunrise and that gave the look the band was wanting for their CD album cover artwork.

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Duncan Long is a freelance CD album cover illustrator who also creates book covers. Among those he’s created artwork for are HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors as well as rock bands worldwide who needed original artwork and illustrations for their CD albums. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Sneak preview of the cover I completed this week for R. Thomas Roe’s Palm Beach Gold.
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Duncan Long is a freelance book cover illustrator and layout artist 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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