Wednesday, September 12, 2012

To Save the Realm ebook Cover



I had a conversation with an author friend a couple of months ago who related to me that some of her friends were making a pretty penny writing erotica for online book stores.  It was an interesting story and we all chatted about what kinds of erotica we'd like to write (none of which would have sold well at all), and by the end of the night I'd totally forgotten about it.

A month ago I had a dry stretch during my off-month of not working on Prison Architect, and the conversation came back to me.  I decided to do some research on ebook authors, and see if there was a market for cover artists, and it turns out there's a pretty big market out there.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, especially since I'd already previously  been approached by an ebook about doing his cover (time was a little constrained back then, and I made the decision not to pursue it).  

I failed to realize it before, but now I understand that the Kindle and similar ebook devices have created a booming market in self published books in the same way that the iOS devices created a new market for indie game and application developers.  Of course books have become such a niche that this market is inevitable much smaller than the app and games market, but this was still an untapped market for me.  After a week or two of posting on kindleboards and other forums, I finally got my first assignment.  I was hired by author T.B. Crattie to remake the cover of his book "To Save The Realm", a cold war spy novel with just a dash of fantastical elements.  It's definitely not perfect, and I had some trouble with the vehicle in particular, and I think I went overboard with the fog (the author specifically said that he liked how I made clouds and mist, so I figured I'd give him that!).  Hopefully I'll get more projects coming in soon, and this will become another steady revenue stream for me.

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