Anyone have any links/tips for finding artwork for self-published books? Any info would be appreciated!
Deviantart is a good place for finding art and artists.
Do you contact the artist directly and buy from them? I guess deviantart has changed a bit -- I havent looked at that site in years, some good stuff on there nowadays. I wonder if there is any kind of brokering service that sits between the artists and those who would purchase rights from the artists? I'm too lazy and stupid to deal with litigious weirdos, it would be nice to have a simple way to purchase/bid on rights to images.
@JGB: From what I understand (which could very well be flawed and entirely misleading), a lot of the artists on deviantart are sort of in the same boat as a lot of us, and are willing to give away cover art as long as it gets their name plastered on something that somebody might see.
Yeah. Just contact them. Most will let you use their artwork for free. If you want them to do something new, offer money. Also keep in mind that cover design is also important. Putting an artist bio at the end of the book is a nice thing to do.
I've been on dA for years and have met a lot of artists. Ask nicely. If they don't have exposure, as others have said, they may just let you use something. A lot of others would probably design something specific for really cheap.
Groovy, thank you all. I'm actually surprised at some of the quality work on deviantart.
There are teeming hordes of crap, but tons of great stuff too.
Hopefully other self-publishers read this thread. As stated earlier, artwork (even on the Interwebs) is not free to use. Just like a writer would not want to see their stories appear without permission on someone's website (which happens all the time), artists don't want their stuff appearing without permission.
And, of course, it's not just a matter of writers/artists not liking it, it's copyright infringement (bom bom BOMMMMM!).
Has everyone seen this about the Oatmeal cartoonist? Some site was posting a bunch of Oatmeal's cartoons without permission.
Jeffery, deviantart is a great place, for sure. i've spokend to a lot of really talented artists on there. you can always use a stock photography company as well, such as Getty or istockphoto, they are usually pretty cheap. i've also approached artists directly, such as Luke Chueh (http://www.lukechueh.com/) and you can usually get them to license an image for a few hundred dollars, depending on how big they are. so the budget is really up to you.
Searching for images licensed under creative commons may work as well: http://search.creativecommons.org/
It explains a bit about it here: http://www.digett.com/blog/04/18/2011/how-find-free-blog-images
I've always bought images for sites/marketing materials from istockphoto et al, but I've never really found stuff on there that seemed right for a book jacket. I think it's only because I hate photographs as book covers. I only like paintings -- blame the hundreds of straight-to-paperback greyhound-terminal-rack horror novels I read in the 80s and 90s.
Despite my deep and abiding love of the open-source software community/ideals (not to mention rms, my own personal jesus), I'm very aware of and respectful of copyright/IP for artists/writers.
I think my editor found the cover art for Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You by searching creative common images. He asked the artist for permission anyway. It took him a while to talk me into using the art since I was concerned with the legalities of putting a drawing of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover of the book.
Bradley that is hilarious - I was just thinking about that cover, since it's pretty obviously Schwarzenegger. I would think you could have a good Fair Use case, though that law is notoriously nebulous. I wonder if your usage of the likeness is covered in the same way as, for example, tabloid photographers?
I have no idea. I figure I'm too small fry for Arnold to care. Although I made sure my contract stated that the publisher would be legally liable instead of me. Probably the worst thing that could happen is we receive a cease and desist letter and we have to change the cover.
Or he dangles you from a cliff by your ankle. I've seen him do it.
He's never dangled me from a cliff.
I mean...
Damnit.
see you find a guy who's a bored photographer... you tell him what you want, and you pay him for his time, and his photoshop abilities. I know one.
His name is Charles.
What if you produce your own artwork? How do you go from there?
Uh...you write a book and use your artwork for the cover?
I'm still processing what I said...
Hi al
this might help looks like like he does a great job thinking about using he myself
My aunt does cover art for magazines and authors. Though I'm not entirely sure if she does this for self-published works, you can always ask her.
Her name is Sonja Aghabekian. I'm fairly sure you can google her or send her a message via Facebook.
