I was browsing through some ebooks about a week ago, looking for something to read: and I came across these.

http://www.ereader.com/product/detail/16023?preview_image_type=large&book=Reflections_of_a_Recovering_Servant

http://www.ereader.com/product/detail/11158?preview_image_type=large&book=The_Soul_Cages

Not to make too fine a point of being a critic -- but these renders are fairly pedestrian.  I haven't bought the ebooks, so I don't know whether the stories themselves make for interesting reading -- but perhaps instead there will be a mad dash to find a new career in rendering ebook covers........then again: it's possible that the authors themselves rendered their own book covers.  If so, then they didn't have to pay an artist to do it for them.

Renders like these could be slapped together with a few minutes of effort.

Surely someone could come up with a great V4 ebook cover -- better than these.  Perhaps the ebook would sell a few more copies if an aspiring artist produced a great ebook cover for an aspiring writer.  And perhaps the cover artist could get rich......right along with the ebook author.  Become famous with V4.

Who knows......?  It might even be possible to pick up an extra $25 or so doing work like this.

take a look at steve jackson games (sjgames.com) GURPS MAGIC book. it has really incredibly BAD poser work - i mean really bad m2 stuff with some photoshop pastels filters.

i worked for an ebook (self publish press thing) and i was really really new to poser and i am not proud. but the back and fouth plus the need to purchase some particular products (no not THAT kind of hat! one with exta points) was a bit annoying....
i would go $90 ;)

Well, it works. Yay for spartan. :p Dangling breasts would triple the sales. ;p
Again, even the work is sloppy, would readers of an ebook would flip through it ONCE. The only time where the cover applies would be point of purchase. Would most authors care? And why would they pick poser artists when there's general illustrators around (just a rhetoric question, no offense at all) that can do "must-buy" work for a larger sum (read below).

We'll leave it to Poser 10+ and Victoria 7/ APM 2014 to be the cover of Ballistic Production's EXOTIQUE series (real hardcover books) though.

p/s: I wonder how Stephen King's Lisey's Story would sell if a Poser Render was on it (regardless of quality). I for one, bought Cell because the presentation and packaging looked awesome.

one of our members was using poser to do covers for paperbacks IIRC. what they call "bodice-rippers" - it's a lucrative market. but I think the deal fell thru for some reason. they quit using 'em or something.

Quote - Not to make too fine a point of being a critic -- but these renders are fairly pedestrian.

most masterfully said.

What's wrong with that? Maybe they wanted simple not extreme? The cover looks ok to me.

I render my own covers when I do my own ebooks for my own private use.

I dont use people figures though I use props and animals.

Seeing them with non-Poser eyes is difficult, but I'd say they're
at least as good as the usual Harlequin cover.  The second one
does an especially good job of conveying a story.

Quote - Seeing them with non-Poser eyes is difficult, but I'd say they're
at least as good as the usual Harlequin cover.  The second one
does an especially good job of conveying a story.

Are you referring to the bookcovers which feature Fabio with wind-swept hair?  Uh.....do Harlequin books have Fabio on the cover......?  Not exactly my taste in literature -- so I can't call up a mental image to compare.

I agree that the second cover conveys a story.  She's naked, obscured in shadow, and there are chains hanging in the background.  So......it's likely that the text of the story itself will incline in a certain direction -- assuming that one can judge a book by its cover.    In that case -- at least you have some idea about what you are buying before you buy it.

Quote - What's wrong with that? Maybe they wanted simple not extreme? The cover looks ok to me.

Oh......nothing's "wrong" with it........depending upon what you mean by "wrong".  It's perfectly OK to render a basic, un-postworked image in Poser: and then use it as a cover for an ebook.  Insofar as I know, the current US Congress hasn't passed a law against such a practice.

I believe that the suggestion here is that a slightly more professional cover art job would probably help to increase the sales of the ebooks.

Sure, it's possible to produce Poser images which match or exceed a lot of the book cover art that you commonly see.  It's done all of the time in the galleries here -- but such results typically involve massive amounts of 2D post-working.  Which is anathema to some -- but that's another issue (which has already been discussed ad nauseum).

I should add that I don't personally believe that it's a bad idea to use Poser renders as ebook covers.  In fact, I think that it's a potentially good thing.

I just believe that it can be done......better.

Attached Link: Book Cover

Having said that, basic adjustments should really take very little time to do, and should be done regardless. Then again, the publishing dates for the books say 2003 and 2004, and back then, what you're seeing on the covers wasn't that far away from the average image here.

There is some money to be made in book covers, yes. But not as much as people think, even less than in the marketplace tbh. There was even an e-publisher that offered me $10 per cover as if they were doing me a favour. If anybody is thinking of doing this, I would suggest you think it over VERY WELL before giving such a low price to your work, because frankly, even the simplest of covers should take you more than an hour or two to put together, quite a long while for the render at the necessary size, and that's without the author's second input for modifications. Is your work really worth $10 or less an hour, without even getting into the aspects of buying stuff needed for a specific cover?

Arien nearly sums it up perfectly.  Actually, the Einsteinian equation is:

Money = Time

The more lucrative, the more time and resources to be employed in the endeavor.  The less lucrative, the better the quicker skadoo.

As noted, if you're getting $10 for a 'full production render image' - how much time and effort are you really going to invest?  I make $10/hr picking my nose (sorry for the noxious graphic) and typing with the other hand.  For $20/hr, I might actually use both hands...

I use Poser for book covers too [none of the above by the way] you'll find examples on my web site, I make some cash out of it and that's good enough for me!!

Kuroyume: that's what I told the publisher. I live in the UK, that would be more or less the equivalent of what I'd get in an hour of piling cans at the local supermarket. They thought I was being unreasonable and having a diva fit.

As a comparison, I made £25 an hour for coding HTML +CSS while contracting, and although the hourly wage as a permie is quite lower than that, it still doesn't reach the abysmal price these people were prepared to pay.  Heck, even if I was using photos from iStockPhoto and trying to cut down time, I would still need to shell out at least $3 per 300dpi image I wanted to use.  At those rates, it isn't even pocket money; I'd be better served by doing images for free that I really want to do, or by training on something else to expand my earning potential, instead of wasting time and computer power on a book cover done for peanuts, that as such, will also not be the best I can produce, and will reflect badly on me as an artist.

I felt the covers worked, but they certainly could be better. As Arien says, do these people pay enough to get better pictures? However it's done, good cover art is expensive. And be careful of what rights you sign away.

There's no question that they don't pay enough, generally they don't!
The thing is this though, if doing this Poser, Vue art thing is a hobby and you can generate some cash to help fund other purchses for stuff you want then it's a good way to do it if you're happy with the pay.
The way I look at it is this, I would be playing around doing images anyway, so instaed of doing one to upload here, I'll do one to earn a few quid, 'nuff said!!

Excuse me while I go and scrub my eyeballs... Can't we have a Bad Art tag?

Idon't think the pic is that bad. And if you compare it to other covers you see in bookstores it's quite good. A lot of the time the art in book stores is just a gun on a table or something as they don't have enough money to pay for a model to be in the pic. Love esther

Attached Link: Waterdance (Author: Anne Logston, Publisher: Mundania Press)

HOWEVER

That being said, I also do freelance work for a number of "romantica" companies who pay ....erm....not alot.  So the time/money factor needs to be taken into consideration.  I'll be the first one to admit that the company that pays more gets more effort and better covers.

I've attached a link to one in my gallery that received quite a bit of effort recently. :)

Don't discount the so called "bad covers"....the old adage holds true...

..."you get what you pay for"...

I've seen a few ebooks with Poser art and yeah, my first thought is "that sucks...that sucks bad".

As an example from the "doesn't suck" category see the Star Wars Legacies covers.

What I would like to say here is that I think it is grossly unfair to put peoples images into this thread and call them bad.
Sometimes the artists hands are tied by the publisher in that they want the image done a certain way or in a certain style and believe me some of them can be "VERY" strict on what they want from the cover.
They will quite often give work to an artist based on that artists particular style too because that's what they want, it really is all about what "THEY" want!!

I don't know who the work above belongs to but I don't think slagging them off in a public forum is fair, especially as none of us know the circumstances in which the images were made!

I have to agree with the fixer.....I have had covers I absolutely hated because the one I liked the publisher or the author didn't and asked me to change it in such a way that i believed it to look even worse. In those circumstances there's not much you can do really.

Gosh it's nice weather we've been having lately...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2653621

LOL @ EnglishBob, 
Assumptions eh!   who'd have 'em!!!

Quote - Xenophonz: more postwork = more time. And when the machine is already tied up doing a massive render at 300dpi -which limits the output-, if money isn't that good, quite a few people are not going to postwork things too much, because they are already making little money on them as it it.

It's all a relative thing.  To some, ten bucks is ten bucks (uh.....ten quid is ten quid?) -- spend part of a day or two churniing out 10 quickie covers -- and they've made $100.  Which might be well worth it, depending upon someone's economic circumstances.  As thefixer has indicated -- such an income might at least help to defray the cost of a Poser addiction..........

Plus there's the intangible thrill of seeing your work on a book cover.  What value is that?  I suppose that some people would do it for free.  Or even pay the publisher to let them do it.

Quote - Having said that, basic adjustments should really take very little time to do, and should be done regardless. Then again, the publishing dates for the books say 2003 and 2004, and back then, what you're seeing on the covers wasn't that far away from the average image here.

No doubt of that.  We all have to start somewhere.  And lest someone say that that's a slam -- it's a reality.  Nothing wrong with being a beginner.  I strongly support and encourage beginners -- and weekend warriors.  But I wouldn't suggest putting those beginning works up against those of pros.

Quote - What I would like to say here is that I think it is grossly unfair to put peoples images into this thread and call them bad.
Sometimes the artists hands are tied by the publisher in that they want the image done a certain way or in a certain style and believe me some of them can be "VERY" strict on what they want from the cover.
They will quite often give work to an artist based on that artists particular style too because that's what they want, it really is all about what "THEY" want!!

I don't know who the work above belongs to but I don't think slagging them off in a public forum is fair, especially as none of us know the circumstances in which the images were made!

Personally, I have no more problem with 'slagging off' the presentation of a commercial product of this nature than I would have of criticising the latest direct-to-DVD indie-produced movie's intro.  Regardless of the behind-the-scenes mechanations which produced such a result.

That's reminiscent of the threads that one sees from time to time complaining about negative comments placed on gallery images.  IMO, that's a part of what comment fields are for.  And that's also a part of what public forums dealing with the subject of Poser are for.

grrrr  feels grumpy  grrr 
has nothing nice to say

bB

Attached Link: Romance Cover Reviews

I love Smart Bitches... LOL..I've been trashed by them...it's kinda like an honor in the "romantica" cover circles

LMAO!!!!

As 'they' say -- in some instances there's no such thing as bad publicity.  But of course: some people get mad when that counter-intuitive effect is pointed out to them. 

Meh...most of us are aware that there's a certain amount of humor in the covers we create...a certain amount of ...triteness  ;)

Never take yourself too seriously.  It inhibits growth.

Quote - Never take yourself too seriously.  It inhibits growth.

Very, very true.

Quote - What I would like to say here is that I think it is grossly unfair to put peoples images into this thread and call them bad.
Sometimes the artists hands are tied by the publisher in that they want the image done a certain way or in a certain style and believe me some of them can be "VERY" strict on what they want from the cover.
They will quite often give work to an artist based on that artists particular style too because that's what they want, it really is all about what "THEY" want!!

I don't know who the work above belongs to but I don't think slagging them off in a public forum is fair, especially as none of us know the circumstances in which the images were made!

Yes, I do agree to a point.  However, personally if I am putting my name to something I want it to be of quality and the very best that I can do. *

I doubt very much that a  publisher would ever ask an artist to create a sexy / romantic image and state that they want the woman's eyes to be crossed and  that they have a totally lifeless look of dead doll's eyes, unless of course it was a romance between zombies.

It is possible to meet the criteria of a publisher while still delivering something of quality. It's all about attention to detail.  It's the attention to detail that makes some artists stand out way above others.  And you can really tell who cares about what they create vs someone that just slaps something together so that they can move onto the next project.

Harsh? Maybe.  But I'm a perfectionist and it drives me bonkers to see details that should be common sense, blindly passed by the eyes of people who claim to be professionals.

That is usually true Acadia . :) Most good publishers will recognize that generally an artist knows better than the author what will sell books on the cover. If they insist on going with the author's lousy vision over the artist's saleable cover they won't be in business very long.

Caveat: I'm not saying all authors have lousy visions when it comes to covers...all I'm saying is that the cover should be a collaborative effort between the author and the artist and the author should be able to take advice from the artist trusting that they know their field of expertise.

I find myself thinking that maybe I ought to try making a book cover. The one's the started this thread, "pedestrian" is maybe the right word. They're missing some little spark that would make the difference. Look at some of the other ebook covers by the same author, and you can see a woman with a sword who seems boring. No, it's not lack of skin exposure, or an absence of potential wardrobe accidents. It's stuff like the general colour of the image. Anyway, does anyone want to take up the challenge? An image suitable for a romance novel, perhaps vaguely historical, the classic "bodice-ripper" sort of thing.

a large part of the overall problem that faces a lot of poser art, not just book covers, is the artist's lack of attention to facial expression and fluidity of motion.

Quote - Caveat: I'm not saying all authors have lousy visions when it comes to covers...all I'm saying is that the cover should be a collaborative effort between the author and the artist and the author should be able to take advice from the artist trusting that they know their field of expertise.

True, although in my experience, usually the more "involved" the author wants to be, and the more of a set idea the author has, the more difficult it becomes to do things from an artistic point of view.

I've had the Art Department refusing the pass a cover onto the author until I painted it over, because while they hired me on the strength of my Poser portfolio, somehow they didn't want my images to look like Poser (DOH!). Then the author promptly remembered to add lots of visual detail about the main characters that wasn't there before (she's too tall, her face needs to be longer, her features different, more muscle, more of a tan, his hair should be longer and have a curl, her hair too, his hair shouldn't be falling over his face despite the fact that it was mentioned it in the description) which caused me to have to re-render and repaint the whole cover again. Or there was that author that had a fixed idea of what he wanted, which really didn't work as a cover at all, then proceeded to make my life hell with what was it, 4 remakes? The difference being that in the first instance the AD didn't do their job, as the author should have given all those details beforehand if she was so particular about them. It was a bit like being a throw-away comodity, in that everybody took for granted that I would just redo stuff ad nauseam until the author was happy. In the second instance, the AD was backing my position, and it was a LOT better from a professional point of view.

On the other hand, my best cover work so far has been where the author gave me a bunch of ideas and a general "feel" of what he or she wanted to achieve, and I took it and made it my own. It's a lot more rewarding when you just click with it.

it was 5 remakes and several more spot renders and one last one after the acceptance right before it went to print... (chimes in the AD from the second instance  ;) )

Well, here's one of my early efforts in the gallery. One of the things I was trying to do was break the symmetry of the face and pose. I don't know if the facial expression is all that good, but I was trying to avoid perfection.

Quote - It's all a relative thing.  To some, ten bucks is ten bucks (uh.....ten quid is ten quid?) -- spend part of a day or two churniing out 10 quickie covers -- and they've made $100.  Which might be well worth it, depending upon someone's economic circumstances.  As thefixer has indicated -- such an income might at least help to defray the cost of a Poser addiction..........

Erm... how long do you think a 300dpi 9x6" cover takes to render if you have half-decent materials? Because I've got a brand new, top of the line machine, and they still take a bit. Which is why the economy really doesn't make sense, unless you're living somewhere where the USD has a lot more acquisitive power.  Me, I can't bring myself to put my name onto something that takes me just half an hour to put together and maybe 15 minutes of post; THAT is why things like dead eyes or hair pokethroughs and weird looking joints are not sorted and Poser art gets ridiculed. haste isn't good when it comes to adding detail, and this is true both for an image and for a product.

Acadia: You missed the point I was making totally, I wasn't defending poorly done images, I was merely pointing out that it is unfair to rubbish someones work when only they and not us did that image in the context it was asked for [presumably].

It's one thing to criticise an image in the gallery when the poster has asked for critique, it is another thing totally to do it here!

Or as a site representative are you saying it's ok for me or anyone else to drag any image into these forums and say "jeez look at this crap, 50 gushing comments and it's shit" because you and I both know what would happen if we did that!!
Sorry I don't agree!

Quote - Erm... how long do you think a 300dpi 9x6" cover takes to render if you have half-decent materials? Because I've got a brand new, top of the line machine, and they still take a bit. Which is why the economy really doesn't make sense, unless you're living somewhere where the USD has a lot more acquisitive power.  Me, I can't bring myself to put my name onto something that takes me just half an hour to put together and maybe 15 minutes of post; THAT is why things like dead eyes or hair pokethroughs and weird looking joints are not sorted and Poser art gets ridiculed. haste isn't good when it comes to adding detail, and this is true both for an image and for a product.

I agree with your basic points here -- particularly if you are approaching the matter from the standpoint of doing book covers, et al for a living......and you want to create a certain reputation for quality for yourself.

But I'm also considering the "starving artist" angle.......it reminds me of a little ditty that I heard on an old 80's-era USA Network TV show once upon a time:

*He's the Commander, he ain't no jerk
He's just happy to get the work!

*Yes, I understand the desire for adhering to the ideal of quality.  And I also understand the necessity of eating.  For some -- it's a priority.

Hey -- if someone offered me enough cash to churn out quick-'n-dirty Poser renders to be used as ebook covers -- then I'd likely do it.  But only so long as my real name was never associated with the work.  :biggrin:

Doing ebook covers will never pay the types of engineering contract rates that I've been used to when doing contract work.  But it's FUN to someone who is stepping out of what's been their decades-long career path in order to do art as opposed to designing electrical wiring in chemical plants -- and there's something to be said for that.  Even if it's at 10 bucks a pop.

Quote - As noted, if you're getting $10 for a 'full production render image' - how much time and effort are you really going to invest?  I make $10/hr picking my nose (sorry for the noxious graphic) and typing with the other hand.  For $20/hr, I might actually use both hands...

both hands to pick???? or type? ducks

 :biggrin:

Quote -
Or as a site representative are you saying it's ok for me or anyone else to drag any image into these forums and say "jeez look at this crap, 50 gushing comments and it's shit" because you and I both know what would happen if we did that!!
Sorry I don't agree!

shakes head

Please don't pull that :)

I'm not going to get into a bunch of words with you about this so the only thing I'm going to say about that statement is that  just because I have "co-ordinator" by my name, doesn't mean that  I can't have a personal opinion about things.  It also doesn't mean that everything I say in the forums is said in the manner of being a "representative".  Joining the site staff didn't make me an automatron :)

awww.  this whole second page is a let down.  did nobody go to the critique blog?  how can any of you say anything serious after seeing a cover for a romance titled "llama land?"  and reading comments about the romance of childbirth.  i haven't laughed this hard in ages- i have actual tears coming out my eyes.  every time i think about it, i can't keep from giggling. 

To the original poster. I agree, those poser renders seem fairly cheap. I can't believe they would keep that for something that is supposed to be PROFESSIONAL

I have to say that I really do not agree with the attitude of being sloppy when your customer's paying less. It seems to make you unprofessional (no offense) when purpoted killing of vision and quality gets in the way.

I convince them to pay more beforehand, or size down my stuff (you want usable in high-res? Pay more please.). It's still high-quality and can easily beat the $10ers down the streets (partly because I don't make them using Poser :D) and they might even sell more!

If your work sells, you don't need to even approach these hard to please markets.

(I've done rather impressive stuff for my classmates for free. Spec job bloodsuckers.)

Well. here's a slightly better one: A_Leaf_in_the_Wind:_The_Chronicles_of_High_Gondylar,_Book_One There's still several weaknesses that catch my eye. First, not a Poser isue, the typography could be better matched. It goes from very decorative to a rather solid sans serif font for some of the title and the author's name. The lighting on the background and foreground seem mismatched. I'm not sure what the background is supposed to be, but the foreground figure seems almost sepia-toned. I've a suspicion I could duplicate the figure, but that's not an artistic problem. Still, Poser does risk a predictable result. It also reminds me, ever so slightly, one those old D&D tie-in novels. It isn't so blatantly aimed at teenage boys, but it has some of the same features.

To be fair, design and general layout of the cover is not always the artist's responsibility. The covers that I do for EC (photo, not poser mind you) the font and cover layout itself is the responsibility of their inhouse Art Department.