Artwork for the book

Guess what - people judge a book by it's cover.  After all, with zero people on the entire planet (apart from myself) to recommend it to anyone, how else are you supposed to make a choice?  Therefore I was prepared to spend a few hundred quid getting it right.  I asked a friend of mine, who works in the publishing business, if he would be prepared to design me a cover, but he did graphic design work, which was not really what I was after.  He did, however, recommend the following website to me:

http://www.beehiveillustration.co.uk/

I went onto their site and looked around the Fiction/Teen section, then found an artist with an excellent collection of example works called Janos Jatner.  "Great", I thought.  "For the three hundred quid my mate told me I could expect to spend, plus a little bit more perhaps, I can get an award-winning cover.  Oh, no no no.  This artist is great, but you have to spend good money to get a good product.

My first artistic brief after contacting the company was for an epic battle to be portrayed on one of the planets.  Janos said he would be able to do that, but at over a grand in price!  Wow.  I'm not saying he wasn't worth every penny - quite the opposite, in fact, but I just could not justify the cost, so I re-wrote my artistic brief, based on other examples he had submitted.

In the end, I went for a very simple design based on one of the aliens in my book.  The reasons were:

1)  To get the most bang for my buck, it would have to be relatively easy to draw
2)  Having said that, Janos could concentrate on the detail (the expensive bit) on only a small section of the artwork.

If you look at my book cover (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sentry-ebook/dp/B00EN4J95G/), you'll see he did exactly what I asked.  The main body of the detail is confined to a relatively small area, but the picture looks very good as a whole.  I would thoroughly recommend him to anyone with a small or large budget, as he is obviously very talented and followed the artistic brief incredibly well.  I asked him to use his imagination, which he did.  I asked him for an alien with canine features, and he did that too.

So, did I give him the correct artistic brief?  Only time will tell, as up to this point I have only sold three copies on Amazon.com, and had seven free downloads of a sample from Smashwords.com.  Here are a couple of tips I have picked up though:

1)  Don't go for a complicated scene.  The artwork will have to look good and concise even at low screen resolutions.  Many people will not take the time to examine every work in detail when they are buying a book, so it has to catch the reader's eye.
2)  Make sure your artwork is of the right dimensions, and of the appropriate format.  Here is Amazon's advice for how to submit their artwork:  https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM
3)  When considering the cover, make sure you specify to the artist that he/she leaves enough room for the book's title & your name!  What's the point in paying for a masterpiece if you're only going to scribble all over it, so decide how much text you want on the cover, and where, before starting!
4)  Bleed.  This is what all writers do for their art, but I'm talking about the borders of the cover.  Don't forget, you might want it for books of different sizes, so make sure the main body of the work is in the middle, and leave out the less important detail for the edges of the picture.  I went for a bleed of 1cm on each side, which I found ample.
5)  Make sure it's a high-resolution image you get sent.  Mine was of a high enough standard that I was able to cut out a small portion of the background and use it as the book's rear cover.  ESSENTIAL MONEY-SAVING TIP if you don't want to pay for two artworks!  Oh, and don't forget to check the terms and conditions of the artist, to see if they are OK with that.  I did, so there was no problem.

So how much did I pay?  £600 for the artwork.  Considering the original estimate, and also considering I got exactly what I asked for, I would consider that money well-spent.  Now then...what's next, I asked?