by Giselle Renarde
Like so many of us here at The Grip, I'm not big on technology. I've had the same cell phone since 2005. It doesn't even have a camera. No biggie, because my camera has a camera. I own three computers, but no tablets or e-readers. In fact, work aside, I've never read a book digitally. I like to hold a book in my hands. I'm old-fashioned, that way. Bad young person! Bad!
Hmm... I seem to be using the word "defunct" a lot. I'm kind of amazed I'm still here when so many publishers, websites and retailers have closed their doors.
Anyhoo, ebooks kind of took off, didn't they? I have a lot of them on the market. 100? 200? I don't know. I've lost track. I stretched myself a little thin, sending work to a number of different publishing houses. One of my absolute favourites, eXcessica, started out as a co-op. After a few years, it grew into even more of a co-op, meaning things like cover art and formatting became the author's responsibility.
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| I made this cover. |
But when the alternative is spending money on a cover artist? Well, you know me--I'm that delightful combination of cheap and impoverished, so time to figure out how to use technology.
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| Made this one too. |
I've heard other people say they tried GIMP and gave up on it. I hear you,
writers! It is NOT user-friendly. Two years later, I still struggle with it when I'm trying to do something I don't know or have forgotten how to do. But, to tell you the truth, I love creating book covers now... mostly because shopping for stock photos is really just a convenient excuse for staring at boobs and calling it work.
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| I even took the picture! |
I'll have to tell you about delving into another realm I swore I'd never enter--self-publishing--but that's a post for another day...
I should have mentioned the cover for The Birthday Gift was designed by Renee Rocco, someone who's thrived like crazy in spite of all this defuncting.
ReplyDeleteAnd book covers have become so important over the years - unless you're a bestselling author when your name and the title suffice, you better have at least something indicative of the subject matter on display. I'm more than happy to leave it to the publisher's graphic dept!
ReplyDeleteYour skills are impressive, Giselle! You know much more than I do.
ReplyDelete"shopping for stock photos is really just a convenient excuse for staring at boobs and calling it work." Where do you shop for stock photos, Giselle? Sounds like much more fun than the sites I use!
ReplyDeleteAnd GIMP - definitely up there in the pantheon of worst user interfaces in the world! I actually like your covers a lot, and I'm amazed you do them with GIMP!
I hate to admit that there's something I wish I could do that I'll never get around to doing, but I'm afraid self-publishing with no help is the major one. Flying in a hot-air balloon, however, is still quite possible.
ReplyDeleteI keep meaning to write a blog post called "the top three reasons why I started self-publishing" and it'll just be 3 pictures of royalty cheques. Of all the things I thought I'd never do, self-publishing is the major one and not because of stigma or effort or or or... simply because of the tax implications. It's a little messy, for "international" authors.
ReplyDeleteBut, seriously, I have a royalty cheque from a publisher sitting on my dining room table in the amount of $1.20. One dollar and twenty cents. If you've got a giant backlist of previously published material, like I do, self-publishing feels like a windfall.
It's all so much for a poor writer to do. When do we get time to write? Used to be the publisher did many aspects of the job. But, as you say, there's so many choices nowadays. Just what path(s) to take? I'm attending a M. Christian class in April that's focused on making money. From the looks of the promo, he goes over what works, what doesn't.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed you do your own covers—they come out quite nice. Intimidation over cover design is a major reason I've never tried self-publishing. I really don't want to have to learn how to do it.
ReplyDelete