POD Covers and POD....

[alfreda89]

Everyone, I am about to plunge into the world of custom artwork for my Alfreda novels. (Yes, I have pretty much decided not to submit them to NYC. The agent will get other things from me, but I do not expect a house to offer me a contract I could sign.)

This is not going to be cheap, and apparently I need to decide up front which group I'm going to work with for the POD version. The templates vary. The artist can make a print cover and then create the ebook cover from it, but the reverse doesn't happen easily, if at all. So -- this is your chance to express yourself.

Have you tried any of the POD suppliers? Create Space? Lightning Source? Lulu? I'm going to search for quality vs.cost vs. distribution options. I want acid-free paper. We're talking three books that I hope convention vendors will be interested in trying out, that I hope might make their way into bookstores. But I also realize that sales online, even of print, may be all that will happen, since trade paperback books are so much higher in price (last I checked) than mass market books.

I'm interested in your experiences and opinions, if you would like to share them. You can contact me by message, if you want to comment privately.

I want to hear your war stories. I can only afford to do this once -- screwing up will set me back years and money I don't have to spare. So, anyone who has time to share their story? This is the moment.

And yes, I will share conclusions. An Excel spreadsheet will be born!

Thank you.

Comments

[estara.livejournal.com]

Maybe Andrea Höst could highlight her experience if you asked her via Goodreads message, as she isn't on LJ? She does have some awesome Julie Dillon covers, she always offers her books as POD, too AND she did - from what I understand - the work on her stockphoto covers (for And All the Stars and The Touchstone Trilogy - the current covers) herself.

Also, shouldn't the BVC people have some singular experience with that. Oh right, and since I see MSW posting below, she did get those spiffy covers for her short stories.

Another person who offers ebook conversion is independently published author Moriah Jovan (no idea how long her waitling list is). I can personally vouch for the beauty of her ebooks at least. http://b10mediaworx.com/b10mwx/

I bet this link will put me in the spam folder again, heh.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Not the spam folder, but just to the mailbox and not the site!

I'm thinking I want to work with the artist who just did Linda Nagata's new cover for MEMORY. (You saw that post over at BVC?) Lovely work -- just needs stronger fonts for lettering, IMO. I think I told you my idea for doing Alfred covers? A young girl's hands holding spring/stream water -- and a different image on each book? Maybe a werewolf for NC, a stag with flaming antlers for KR, and a maze seen from eye level, heading for a T, for Spirit Tracks? I'm even thinking of different seasons for the feeling behind the hands and stream -- summer for NC, autumn for KR, winter for ST.

I am not sure I know enough about Photoshop to do that, Estara. Maybe I'm too ambitious? But I know that sucky cover art can kill a book or an ebook. It killed the Alfredas originally.

Maybe Andrea will share a few bullet points, if asked. Good idea, thanks.