Category Archives: Book Covers

JoAnna’s Rescue – Book Cover Reveal

Hello again, long time no-see. But, fear not, I have a book cover to reveal. 🙂

SBibb - JoAnna's Rescue Book Cover

Today we have “JoAnna’s Rescue,” another cover for Melange Books. This one is for a romance novel. This is another case where a collaboration between the author and illustrator can work out well. In this case, the author had an idea of what she wanted, and provided links to a couple images (from Dreamstime) that she thought might fit. However, we wanted a snowy, blizzard look, so I photoshopped in the snow and put the images together. In the long run, the publisher suggested we might also want the guy’s face on the cover (to suggest the romance aspect of the novel), but we didn’t want it to be the main focus. So the author found one she liked (Fotolia), and I added it in, blurring the image a bit an lowering the opacity so that, while it is closer to the viewer, it isn’t the first thing to catch the eye. 🙂

Photoshop CS6.

Stock images from Dreamstime and Fotolia:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-country-scene-farm-house-winter-image24715572
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-winter-portrait-young-beauty-image26384705
http://us.fotolia.com/id/27527058

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Cover Reveal – Shadow Trail

This is another cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Shadow Trail Cover

 

Photoshop CS6. Stock from Dreamstime:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-woman-red-snowmobile-image17555834
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-forested-shoreline-winter-fog-image7463413
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-young-woman-winter-portrait-image8065139

Sometimes cover design is a process of elimination. Sometimes you hit a design everyone in the cover design process likes the first time around. When I read the cover art form for Shadow Trail, an idea formed, and searching for stock, everything was right there. I placed the elements did some tweaking, then presented it to the author. It worked, yay!

So we put the final cover together with a few more tweaks. As a side note, fonts can help a cover stand out from the rest. A while back I purchased a package of 10,000 fonts, and every once in a while I’ll check to see what I can find there, especially if none of the fonts I currently have are quite working right. (http://www.ultimatefontdownload.com/) Granted, some of the fonts are available for free, if you’re willing to look for them, but here everything is compiled into an easy to search area, for which I use Font Viewer to find what I’m looking for. 🙂

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Cover Reveal – Freeing Abigail

This is another cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Freeing Abigail Cover

This is another example of how using a single photo can work for a cover. It’s something I’ve seen more prominent in romance/contemporary works. For this, I used ( http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-loving-young-sensual-couple-champagne-bed-image17978822 ) from Dreamstime. This is also a case where the author requested a specific photo. We worked through several potential images before finally deciding on this one, and I changed the hair color of both models to fit the characters, along with fading the image and applying filters and blurring effects to get the final cover image.

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Cover Reveal: Spirits of the Pirate House

This is another cover for Melange Books.

SBibb - Spirits of the Pirate House

Stock Used:

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-old-wooden-manison-south-image18682006
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-smoking-image10381260
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-pirate-captain-image1336783
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-man-pirate-costume-pistols-image23677904
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-pirate-image20856919

Putting this cover together was a doozy. While many of my previous covers have been 2-4 stock images, plus textures, this is an example of using digital manipulation to create an entirely different character. Take a look at the different stock images used, then look at the final product. The palm tree was shorter, the pirate consists of several different stock images, a bit of photoshop to make him look angrier, plus doing the color changes and removing the trinkets in the hair. Plus changing lighting. So if you like seeing how you can piece-part an image together, this is the one to look at.

Overall, though difficult to make sure everything was placed as desired, this was a nice review to photomanipulation for creating a new image. 🙂

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Cover Reveal – Unfinished Business

This is the cover for Unfinished Business, from Melange Books.

SBibb - Unfinished Business Cover

Stock Used:

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-syringe-cup-coffee-image17032004
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-close-up-gold-french-coin-napoleon-wooden-table-image29942453
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-france-map-image10577480

For this one, the cover turned out to be relatively simple to do. It’s a suspense/thriller. For this, since it is supposed to have a noir feel to it, I used a dark blue primary color, as well as a grunge tinge. Originally there was a thumbtack on Paris (in the stock photo), but at the request of the author, I placed a syringe over Marseilles, where part of the story takes place. I also looked for French coins as part of the cover texture.

The point of doing this is to give readers a sense of what the story is about, and small nuances can make a world of difference in how a cover looks, and whether or not it is picked up by readers. Not only that, but if it’s picked up by the right readers. A cover can get a lot of attention, but if your cover looks like a paranormal romance, and the book is hard-sci, it’s not going to get the correct attention, and may even get negative reviews because the readers didn’t get what they expected.

Something to keep in mind when creating concepts for book covers. 🙂

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Spring Cleaning and Price Updates

Hello there. You may have noticed my blog got slightly reorganized. Added a page for my short stories, removed the pages about my portrait work (can still be accessed via http://www.sbibbphoto.com), and redid the pricing page. Thought it was time to do a little organization. 🙂

The good news is that the pricing page should be easier to read, and also shows examples for the different types of book covers. If you’re looking for a new book cover, be sure to take a look. Prices start at $50.00 plus the cost of stock images.

Please let me know if there’s anything you’ve found particularly helpful on this blog, or anything you’d like to see more of. 🙂

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Cover Reveal – Eine Kleine Murder

 

 

This is a cover for Barking Rain Press.

 

You can find information about the book here: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/products/eine-kleine-murder/

 

Stock from Shutterstock:

 

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-8152831/stock-photo-music-with-antiqued-finish.html?src=lb-17693636
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-70536322/stock-photo-black-ink-spill-near-red-pen-on-table.html?src=lb-17693636
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-127477826/stock-photo-conductor-s-baton-and-music-score.html?src=lb-17693636
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-114364699/stock-photo-vintage-heart-chain-locket.html?src=lb-17693636
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-58387336/stock-photo-open-bottle-of-red-ink-isolated-on-white.html?src=lb-17693636

 

Photoshop CS6.

SBibb - Eine Kleine Murder Cover

 

For this cover, the Photoshop puppet warp tool came in extremely handy. If you want to know what I mean, take a look at the stock photos, the locket in particular. That chain was straight when I started, but I wanted it to curve around the baton, as if it were laying against a table. Yay for photoshop. Also applied various filters and did overlay for dodging and burning, and even added in the shadows on the inkwell. 🙂

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Project Northwest – Cover Reveal

 

This is cover for Melange Books.

 

Had a bit of fun with this one, since I’d done something similar with the numbers effect before, and it gave me a chance to work with more of a “movie cover” style image. 😀

 

Photoshop CS6.

 

Stock Photos from Dreamstime:

 

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-man-holding-gun-image24841327
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-seattle-skyline-sunset-washington-state-image16298240

SBibb - Project Northwest

 

For my bits of insight on this one, I’d say that this is one that reminded me of playing with style and effects with lighting. I got really lucky with the stock image of the man, which is extremely sharp. However, when I was first creating the image, the draft felt a bit dull and lifeless. For whatever reason, I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t looking like the earlier covers I’d created.

This was the final proof I’d created, before we’d decided to use the stocks. Problem was, it wasn’t popping.

SBibb - Project Northwest Cover Proof

So I went back through my old portfolio and looked to see what was different. The one that really stood out to me was a cover I did for my 1000 Words project: http://sbibb.deviantart.com/art/The-Magician-Cover-297327050?q=gallery%3Asbibb%2F33403924&qo=4

Then it hit me. I went back to the Project Northwest cover, and applied the same type of lighting techniques (using overlay to dodge and burn, as well as the high past filter for sharpness). It made a world of difference. I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes it’s good to look back at what you’ve done in the past to see what did and didn’t work, and lighting can make a scene completely different. 🙂

 

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Catrina’s Cowboy – Cover Reveal

 

Hello, there. Uploading another cover for Melange Books.

 

This is a bit different from my usual covers, in that only one photo was used (though I did do a bit of manipulation to it), and I used the color overlay and texture to add special effect to it. Photoshop CS6.

 

Stock Photo from: Dreamstime: http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-roundup-image12597472

SBibb - Catrinas Cowboy Cover

As a sidenote, since I’m wanting to get back into adding bits of insight I gathered from the project when I post these covers, I thought I’d share a few things.

With this being a single photo, I went about the process a bit differently than usual. The author wanted a picture of a working cowboy, so I ended up selecting a stock photo and choosing a single element to focus on (take a look at the original, linked above, and you’ll notice there were originally more cowboys in the picture). I also did some photoshop to edit the man’s appearance to make him look a bit more like the character she described in the book, then added special lighting and effects. Just because it was a single photo didn’t mean it couldn’t benefit from some editing, especially to give it a more romantic look (the book is a romance).

Not only that, but I also played more with text placement and creating a border overlay. I was reminded of how some covers will have that border around them, and wanted to play with that idea.

Anyways, I hope this has been helpful. 🙂

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Lightpoints – Cover Creation Process

Just thought I’d mention that Peter Kassan, the author of Lightpoints (I did the cover) has recently posted a blog post about the cover creation process. Thought others might be interested. 🙂

Read about the process here: http://peterkassan.com/2013/03/blog/

 

SBibb - Lightpoints Cover

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