Well, not that cheap. But I'm hoping this is amortization. Get the tools, learn the stuff about cover design and so forth now, and then the next book it won't be a problem.
As long as I make December. And my new stretch goal is to have prints delivered by Jan 1. No pressure!
So.
I knew this way back, when I was still aiming for trad publishing, and sending off loads of short stories to the magazines. The best way to make money as a writer is to make money off writers.
This got really clear when I listened through a podcast on cover design. Which turned out to be basically an advertisement for the podcaster's course series, meaning the entire thing was pushing courses like the one that they were sort of but not really previewing here by interviewing a guy about his course and book, which does actually have some advice but is just as much an advertisement for his book-cover creation business.
Okay. It felt more Inception than it was. Still, I did feel several shells deep in the effort to actually get at useful information.
Once again, I've discovered the problem of being a fast learner. I quickly move to the "gifted amateur" stage but it is hard to find the resources to move up from there. Top-level searches and resources with wide circulation are inevitably aimed towards the first-time learner. At least for some things, past the transition hump are the serious resources. Which are usually serious money and time -- this is a good reflection of how "jack of all trades, master of none" works out with real subjects.
Come to think, Penny has the same problem. I should put this in the next book.
So there are a zillion tutorials on how to, kludge something up in PhotoShop. Rather fewer on useful techniques and pointers once you've gotten past "how to turn it on and what a layer is."
Anyhow, right now I'm trying to learn a little about fonts. Hours of podcasts, tens of pages, and one full book purchased and read and I have enough actual solid useful advice to fill maybe two typewritten pages. Double-spaced.
Actually, assuming the more decorative design fonts actually work and don't distract too much from the total design, the main thing I got out of searching a bunch of fonts sorted by keywords was a desire to write the stories/settings that went with some of those fonts. Like, ooh, I want to do a story involving Celtic Britain so I can use that font in the title!
And the calyx is in renders. More adventures there. I am tempted to open Poser9, despite the broken Flash (Aaaah!) problem. Because I just can not get IBL -- HDRI lighting -- to work properly in Poser11. And apparently it doesn't work at all in the Superfly render engine, or so forums tell me.
Of course I'd already seen the problem coming. Red-figure Attic ware means large parts of the body of the pot are black. Especially the sides, if I am framing the central image. And I'm doing it against a black background.
I reversed the artwork, though, and I didn't really care for the black-figure look. Not for any connotations; just because so much red pottery just didn't look right in the composition.
So a couple of tweaks to go, then I'll render three to five layers. Since the light shaft is so hard to control, both the top light and the associated atmospheric effect (the "god ray") will be rendered on a black image. That light will be removed from the main color render. I might do the rim light as a separate layer as well. For that matter, it might be safer and easier to do a reflection layer separate (I mashed together some free pictures to make a semi-spherical "tholos interior."
And haven't decided if the bullets are going to be in this. I don't want to diffuse the focus but I also want something that says "action" -- a pot doesn't. And then back again to render a trowel for the back cover. (8×57mm IS rounds, since the appropriate rifle is an FN Model 24).
And, yeah. Back when I thought of using a pot instead of the Parthenon against mysterious brooding clouds, or a stock photo in a leather jacket running away from something out of frame, I was using artifact-based titles. I was amused by the idea of continuing to have the contemporary character and appropriate scenes showing up in ancient art; as the stamped image on a Roman coin for the story that was going to be called The Aurelius Dupondius, for instance.
Incidentally, for those that have forgotten, this is the image that is being referenced, both in the art and in the actual story:
Probably better than a paste-up of stock photos. We'll see. Here's the kind of covers you tend to see if you pop "thriller" and "history" into the Kindle search engine: some good. Some...not so good.
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