Book Cover Illustrations

I got a nice surprise in the ol’ inbox today: SciFiPulse.net has written a nice review of my science fiction novel Lesser Gods — as well as providing a link to my blog. Sweet — and a big “thank you” to the folks at SciFiPulse.net.

The illustrated Kindle version of Lesser Gods is available from Amazon.com as is the the paperback version of Lesser Gods (with additional artwork inside) is available via Amazon.com.

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When not peddling his books, Duncan Long works as an illustrator for self-publishing authors as well as presses including HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Mermaid Books, Pocket Books, ILEX, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Moonstone Books, Enslow Publishers, and many other presses. You can see his work at Duncan Long’s Online Illustration Portfolio.

Yes, there are scam artists out their, preying on authors. And the terrible thing is that some of the major publishing houses are now running a few of them.

Here’s a good round up of “publishers” that are best avoided: The Author Exploitation Business.

And a look at how some Literary Agents Have Sold Out Their Authors.

Interesting twist: Self-Publishing Grabs Huge Market Share From Traditional Publishers.

And an interesting take on why Self Publishing May Be Saving the Publishing Industry.

Two large stacks of boxes appeared on the front stoop today. They contained the print samples of the illustrations (posters, bookmarks, notepads, t-shirts, etc.) for this year’s Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP).

Yes, it was sort of like Christmas.

The prints turned out well and it’s going to be pretty exciting to see my artwork appearing in libraries all across the US.

It’s a dream come true. When I was a kid, I practically lived in the library or was reading books checked out from the library all through the summer. Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Hardy Boys, and Robert Heinlein among others proved to be great company. Often part of the experience were the neat displays and posters hung around the kid’s area. So it’s a real thrill to think I’ll be playing a tiny part in helping kids across the nation have the same great reading experiences during their summer — a chance to “pay it forward” as it were.

You can read more about the process of creating the artwork for my part of the CSLP project here:

Creating Artwork for the US CSLP (2013): Part I

Creating Artwork for the US CSLP (2013): Part II

An excellent overview of the “free” culture, and why it is killing the creative process (and some possible solutions to the problem) from Elmo Keep: Combating The Cost Of The Free Economy.

For those wanting to find out if their book is being pirated — and how to stop the piracy — there’s this nitty gritty piece: Hacker Tools to Combat eBook Pirates

If you’re unsure there’s a problem with piracy and the book industry, there here’s a place to start (it’s a tad dated but still interesting): Five reasons why piracy will kill the ebook digital publishing industry.

In Moving away from free Connor Tomas O’Brien notes: “We all recognize that the Free Economy is broken, but, as consumers, we face a prisoner’s dilemma situation: because there’s no clear incentive for any individual consumer to pay, nobody pays, which means we all end up getting screwed when artists are no longer able to create the content we enjoy.”

In his “state of the industry” piece, Scott Turow tells of The Slow Death of the American Author. Perhaps most to the point is Scott’s contention:

“It seems almost every player — publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars — is vying for position at authors’ expense. Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the Constitution, which instructs Congress “to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The idea is that a diverse literary culture, created by authors whose livelihoods, and thus independence, can’t be threatened, is essential to democracy. That culture is now at risk. The value of copyrights is being quickly depreciated, a crisis that hits hardest not best-selling authors like me, who have benefited from most of the recent changes in bookselling, but new and so-called midlist writers.”

Turow’s opinion piece garnered this responses: A few notes on “The Slow Death of the American Author” by Scott Turow

If worries about piracy weren’t enough, now Amazon is threatening authors’ revenue streams as well: Amazon Ebook Resell Plan May Kill Author Royalties

And finally, one interesting article that is NOT about piracy: How New Technology Is Reinventing Typography.

Some useful tips and suggestions for writers and self-publishers:

Self publishing is changing the marketplace. Here’s a look at Some interesting winners and losers in this process: Ten Ways Self-Publishing Has Changed the Book Industry.

Tips on writer gender-specific dialogue.

Marketing ideas for non-fiction that can be applied to marketing novels.

Rules are made to be broken, right? Well… Maybe… Writing Rules: 10 Experts Take on the Writer’s Rulebook

Part of good novel writing is the “torturing” of your characters — here’s a good place to engage in this: Creating emotional frustration in your characters.

Writing a “hook” that grabs the reader (and perhaps an editor) is essential for success. Here are some tips: Grab the Reader from Page One.

Scribd’s informs me that my illustrated version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Eleonora is on its Rising List. I’m told that’s a good thing.

You can download a free copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Eleonorahere).

My illustrated version of Poe’s The Raven can also be downloaded for free here.

And, yes, my illustrated version of the Masque of the Red Death can also be downloaded for free.

Please share these ebooks links with your friends.

There are some (somewhat lame) secret messages in several of these. So far, no one seems to have discovered them.

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When not illustrating and offering free ebooks, Duncan Long works as a writer and illustrator. His illustrations have appeared on the covers of books sold by HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. You can discover more of his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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Get your free Kindle copy of Kenneth Fore’s action-adventure novel The Wolf Tattoo April 17-19 from Amazon.com (those outside the US will need to enter the title in their local Amazon site).

Synopsis:

A man’s impromptu journey into the Alaskan wilderness is life changing when he tangles with a grizzly and an Eskimo woman who thwarts his attempts to escape. She takes him on an unforgettable journey where they must fight wilderness crazies and mysterious beasts that skulk through the forest like nothing you have ever seen.

When they reached her clan’s winter campgrounds it is an unbelievable place isolated in the middle of the arctic wilderness and it is protected by huge wolves called Saluuettes. He realizes no one escapes after learning the truth about her clan and he must escape or become anything, but ordinary.

The novel is the proverbial “good read.” If you like action-adventure stories, be sure to download a free copy today.

You can also learn about the process of creating the cover for this novel at my previous blog about The Making of the The Wolf Tattoo Cover.

The paperback version of my science fiction novel Lesser Gods is now available, with additional artwork not found in the ebook version — and more interesting typefaces and layout. (Yes, eBooks are nice and handy to read, but print still can be a bit more refined if not prettier.)

Many of my clients have been using CreateSpace to print their books, so I thought I’d try this myself. It has been a few years since I last used this POD (Print On Demand) service, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see how it had improved.

CreateSpace is easy to use and — perhaps more importantly for self-publishers — feeds directly into its parent company Amazon.com, so books produced through CreateSpace automatically get listed in the Amazon catalog. To make the process even more tempting, CreateSpace offers a free catalog number so publishers don’t have to buy an ISBN for the book (while also allowing customers to use their own ISBN if they wish). Basically a self publisher can create his own virtual press, putting his logo and address on the back cover.

Cover and inner layout files are best uploaded as print-ready PDFs. The cover and inner text are uploaded separately (and CreateSpace offers detailed instructions on all this). The spine width is about the only tricky part; it’s determined by the number of pages and the type of paper the publisher chooses. By multiplying the number of pages by the thickness figures supplied by CreateSpace, the spine width is arrived at. (Don’t over-think this and divide the page number by two to get the number of sheets; the CreateSpace calculation is made by the number of pages not sheets of paper.)

When the PDFs are uploaded to CreateSpace, they go through an automated “flight check” to be sure there’s nothing seriously wrong with the layouts and dimensions. CreateSpace generated a number of false alerts during this process — but that was because of some odd design tricks I use. I suspect most users will only have actual problems flagged in this process. This system does add an extra layer of proofing and likely catches a lot of disastrous problems before they go to print and create major headaches.

The next step is producing a “proof copy” (or copies). The is the first book that’s printed from the PDFs submitted. Traditionally this is mailed out to the author and/or editor to be examined for errors or changes that may be needed. A proof print costs a very nominal amount and is always wise to use.

CreateSpace now also offers “virtual proofing” which produces an onscreen representation of the book for examination. While this isn’t quite as secure as a physical proof, it comes mighty close and has the advantage of being much quicker and cheaper since there’s no actual print or shipping involved. I suspect this is the wave of the future, and that print proofs will soon become a thing of the past for many book projects.

The virtual proof front cover (shown above) and back cover (below) as well as the spine can also be viewed as a 3D representation. The cover can be rotated on screen in real time for a variety of perspectives and the shadowing (and the cover even has a “reflection” from the virtual surface it’s over) make the cover seem very real.

The inner pages in the virtual proof are also quite realistic as well and pages can be “flipped.” Here’s the screen that appears (with the upper right corner of the page in the process of a new “page turn”). About the only oddity is the dotted line around the space that the text and pictures should fall into; it is useful, but I found myself wishing I could remove it for a more realistic view of the cover (and that’s my ONLY beef about this system).

Want to start self-publishing? CreateSpace makes it pretty easy. If you run into problems, there’s a forum that you can ask questions in (and it’s searchable so you can often discover answers from questions folks have asked earlier). If you run into something that can’t easily be answered, you can also contact the staff at CreateSpace to get help. I found it all a very satisfying experience.

And, of course, I now have a new paperback edition of Lesser Gods available via Amazon.com as well as CreateSpace’s own virtual store. If you’re looking for a great science fiction adventure set in a near singularity yet dystopian future, check out Lesser Gods.

If you’re thinking about self-publishing a print edition of your book manuscript, CreateSpace is a very easy way to do this.

The “extra wiring” in the brain of a creative person (and, yes, science can now “see” these extra connections in brain cells) often allows them to feel highs of joy and lows of sorrow that others may never experience, and perhaps could not even handle if they did.

The added “emotional depth” many creative people feel may cause them to deeply mourn the loss of animals, a magnificent tree, or even the passing of a sunset. The progress that transforms empty fields into apartments with manicured, chemical laden lawn resembling AstroTurf surrounded by concrete drives and walks will seem tragic to many creative minds and perhaps bring a tear to the eye.

Many creative people are able to operate in brief spurts of “hypomania” — a controlled mania that isn’t quite madness but not quite normal, either. A few psychologists have explored this “high gear” creative folks use to their advantage. One excellent book dealing with this is The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America by John D. Gartner. You can read a bit of it online in the free preview at Amazon. If you are creative (or know someone who is), this might be a worthwhile book to read.

A creative mind with its additional “wiring” between brain cells often makes connections and creates “meanings” where there may be none. That inventiveness and willingness to suspend immediate judgment is key to creativity and also often leads to playful rearrangements of the ideas and objects surrounding a creative person.

Little wonder many outside the creative world mistake (or dismiss) the seemingly eccentric responses of the creative spirit as weakness or mental illness.

Sadly these dismissive souls will never know what it is to be moved by tears by the beauty of a rose or brought to joy by sunlight filtering through the leaves of spring or autumn. Creative people soon come to realize that those outside their community don’t see colors as intensely, or feel emotions as deeply. That doesn’t make one group better than the other. It does make them different in their views and outlooks and responses.

The creative trod in glades invisible to those outside their realm.

I’m no lawyer. But I have signed at least a thousand publishing contracts of one sort or another over the decades I’ve been working in the publishing business. And during that time I’ve dodged a few potential pitfalls that writers and artists can face in contracts. (Up front, let me say that before you sign any contract, it’s wise to spend a few bucks and have a lawyer read it over; this can save you no end of heartache in the long run.)

Sometimes a legal term in a contract can pack a lot of punch while sounding very innocuous.

One such case in US (and most other nations) is the phrase “work for hire” as it applies to copyrights. The phrase sounds innocent. Someone is hiring you to do some work for them, right?

But “work for hire” in a contact has a much different meaning. And put into a contract where it doesn’t places all parties involved at risk of becoming embroiled in an expensive lawsuit.

With writing or artwork, “work for hire” means the person is no longer buying some rights to your work but rather gaining complete ownership of the copyright. He gets every stitch of what you’ve done on the project, and all rights to it — including the right to claim it as his own as if he created it. You can’t even legally show the work in your portfolio or claim it in your resume!

In the case of an artist creating a book cover illustration, rather than just assigning the rights to the picture to the client, if there’s a work-for-hire clause in the contract, it means the illustrator also has to turn over all sketches, paintings created in relation to the project, computer files, etc. Anything used to get to the final picture or its spinoffs, used in the project or not, belongs to the client.

Likewise, a writer has to turn over all notes, rough drafts, and computer files created in writing the book or article.

“Work for hire” used inappropriately can also lead to the whole contract being invalidated or having to be sorted out in court when “work for hire” has been added where it doesn’t belong.

Sadly many people employing this phrase in contracts really do so for no good reason since it’s so easy to simply outline the rights being assigned in a business agreement. A contract that outlines which specific rights are being purchased lets everyone know what is being sold and what is being retained by the creator of the work.

Obviously if you’re a writer or artist, you should treat the “work for hire” in a contract a bit like a landmine in the road. Sadly, less ethical folks do exploit “work for hire” as a way to trick artists or writers into assigning all the rights of their work over to a client without realizing they are doing so.

So when does “work for hire” belong in a contract?

Generally when a client is asking you to create either a part of a greater whole (like an entry in an atlas or encyclopedia), or when the work involves characters or trademarks to which the client owns the rights (say a book cover illustration produced for Disney with one of its characters in the artwork).

Here’s the parameters of where “work for hire” applies (taken from page 110 of the very useful American Institute of Graphic Arts’ STANDARD FORM OF AGREEMENT FOR DESIGN SERVICES):

Also, a written agreement must be signed by both parties saying that it is a work made for hire. If the project doesn’t meet all of these criteria, work-for-hire does not apply. Copyright will belong to you unless you assign it to your client. (More information about copyright is available in the chapter “Guide to Copyright,” page 78, and directly from the U.S. Copyright Office at www.copyright.gov.)