Weekly eBook Winners

 

Congratulations to the weekly ebook winners in Books We Love's annual Spring Fling Event!

This week's winner is Tia (lenikaye).

Tia wins her choice of any two Books We Love ebooks or Spice ebooks. She also receives TEN extra entries into the Kindle Fire drawing May 31. Tia, please visit our website http://bookswelove.net/ and make your two choices, then email the titles to bookswelove@shaw.ca

Remember, only subscribers to our newsletter are eligible to enter our contests, so if you're not a subscriber go here and sign up now. Find the entry form for Spring Fling there too!

http://bookswelove.net/contest.php

Congratulations Tia!

2011 RT Recap

The famous RT Bookovers Convention was held last year at the beautiful Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Jude Pittman and Jamie Hill were pleased to attend representing Books We Love. It was an amazing, whirlwind long weekend meeting authors, other publishers, graphic artists, editors, and yes, even a slew of handsome cover models. 

 

Jamie's cover model -->

Okay, she stole him because Jude saw him first, and actually had dinner with him Thursday night at the Faery Ball. 

After Jamie stole Shane Rice, Jude ended up with:

She kept a tight rein on the chain!

Friday, Jude and Jamie manned a table at Club RT. BWL author Vijaya Schartz stopped by to leave some of her wonderful cover flats and postcards for display. There were free books in the goody bag room, author swag galore in promo alley, and all sorts of seminars to attend. 

Jamie's choice of a newsletter seminar was pleasantly interrupted by an unexpected visit from author Catherine Coulter, who spoke to the group for about an hour on her publishing journey.

Kate Ryan of RT and author Catherine Coulter

Later that day while Jude hustled up the publishing company, Jamie signed books at the ebook expo with roughly 150 other authors. It was a busy, bustling activity. 

Saturday was the huge Barnes and Noble print Book Fair with more than 300 authors, including a few celebrities.

 

Fan-girl Jamie with Susan Seaforth Hayes and her husband Bill Hayes, who played Julie and Doug Williams on Days of Our Lives for many years. They were there signing a Days retrospective.

BWL gave away two lovely baskets, one filled with print books, chocolates, candles and bath items. The second was a Native themed basket created by BWL author John Wisdomkeeper. Along with copies of his book The Wisdomkeeper Collection, there were several Native artifacts including a medicine bag and  dreamcatcher. It was a truly lovely collection and we thank John for his time and generosity!

The view out the hotel window was incredible.

The amount of author swag received was also staggering!

It was a fast and furious weekend, and one every author and booklover should try to experience if at all possible.

Dear Artist - Getting Started and Training for being a cover artist

Dear Artist,

How did you become interested in doing cover art? How did you get started?

Sincerely,

Curious To Know

* * *

Dear Curious,

I originally started out doing cover art with my own books. I actually designed the cover for my first e-book, a short erotic story collection. I wanted to work with the publisher, but I shuddered at some of the covers. Knowing from being on lists that a lot of the time authors have little to know say in their covers, and with that particular publisher – no say, so when I was contacted with an acceptance of my work I told the publisher flat out that I wanted to design my own covers. I would provide the images and everything. Thankfully, they agreed.

After that, I went on to write longer stories, and moved to other publishers that already had cover art teams, and I basically had to take what was given to me. After a while, I felt confident enough in my sales to approach the primary publisher and say hey, I wouldn’t mind doing cover art for you – including doing my own covers. Luckily, I was able to provide a ‘sample’ cover, which was approved. From there, I took over doing my own covers for almost all of my releases. (Some however, are still with publishers that are not looking for new cover artists, have a set feel that they want to their covers, or so on.)

I also started working on covers for other authors at my primary publishing house, and from there, one of the cover artists became a good friend and asked me to start working on covers for another publisher (one that I am not with). I jumped at the chance.

I came to Books We Love because Jamie asked me if I would be interested in joining the team as a cover artist, since she knew I had the skills she was looking for in a cover artist.

I think what motivated me more than wanting to control everything (because that is apart of the appeal), is that my career field is very serious and intellectual. So cover art, and writing, gives me a creative outlet. I am a very tense person by nature, and I relax by working on graphics and either writing, or reading.

Hope that wasn't too long-winded of an answer for you!

* * * ~ * * *

Dear Artist,

What training do you need to become a cover artist?

Curious To Know

* * *

Dear Curious

Hello again!

There actually isn't any set required training. Rather it is just knowledge of graphics programs. Some publishers like artists to know how to work a program called Poser. What poser does is create 3D computer graphic images – people, places and things. When you see an image that looks like the one below, that is a poser image.

(This image is from a site called Pixel Delights that I found back in 2002 or 2003.
Not sure if the artist is still around any more or not.)

The Poser program has gained in popularity, and in graphic ability, over time. I lost my mind once and got the program and tried to use it, but I just couldn't get things to work out the way I wanted them to, so I stopped trying. But many artists do still use it, because they can create pretty much any images they can dream of.

Now, other publishers focus more on stock images, since they want their covers to have that realistic look. So for them, knowledge of a program like Adobe Photoshop or Jasc software’s Paint Shop Pro is a plus.

For myself, I use Photoshop, although I have dabbled a little bit in Paint Shop Pro from time to time. I know a cover artist who uses Paint Shop Pro almost exclusively and finds Photoshop to be difficult. It just depends on comfort level.

As for training – I haven’t had any. I just started playing around with graphics, working on things for my website and for my short story collections, and gradually got more and more confident with the program. I read a lot of tutorials, asked a lot of questions of friends in the field, and did a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for me. And I am still learning. Jude has often gotten emails from me saying flat out that what she is asking for is outside of my skill-set. So we modify things, or I just sit down with a good chunk of time and start playing with things until I learn that skill.

So really, anyone who is patient could theoretically teach themselves how to do cover art. It just depends on how motivated you are.

* * * ~ * * *

If you have a question that you would like Dear Artist to answer, you can leave it in the comment section and it will be addressed soon.