Pulp Book Covers

[D Akey]

It's like I wandered into an old used book store. Really enjoying the vibe and the way you replicate covers that have been beaten up as they're carried around to be read during the days before mobile devices.

[TheEarnestBunbury]

A couple more playing about with colour...

[TheEarnestBunbury]

Toying with cover design - this one is based on a couple of old covers.

[TheEarnestBunbury]

This is the first of two after classic Mike Shayne cover designs. This design, including the primary font and Robert McGuiness art, can also be found on spanish editions of some Mikey Spillane novels. I'm afraid that my little portrait isn't particularly good but I did manage to figure out the lined effect found on this version of the covers, so I'm satisfied.

It's a great exercise in branding that works very well in a thumbnail. However, this comes at the expense of the artwork which needs more contrast to be seen at a small size than is found in some of the original art.

The main font is from the Scriptorium and is called Shayne, having been based on this line of Mike Shayne books.

[TheEarnestBunbury]

These are for a friend of mine who needs a couple of covers now she's completed her second volume of flash fiction in a series - I'm nearly finished with them.

As mentioned before, my goal is to create a method of producing faux painted book covers that are a) of reasonable quality, and b) quick enough to produce so as to be viable for the budgets of self and indie publishers. I'm not motivated to go into that business myself - I doubt I'll ever be that happy with my own work - but I do want to encourage books with the sort of covers that I like to see. Anywho, I think I'm getting there. From opening up Poser (a 3D figure program) to having a finished faux painting exported from ArtRage, took only around 90mins for each of these. I'm not sure how long I spent on the design template but once created, it is simply a matter of placement and swapping out colours to finish individual volumes. If a pre-made cover can be produced in about 2hrs, then allowing another hour at most for customising, this would make covers 3hrs work.

I'm still not certain that this is enough to make it viable for the pre-made cover market though. The top end price for pre-made covers is about $150 to $200 - but they have to be very good to sell at that price - while the average is about $70. On top of this, the pre-made market is a scattershot strategy, so those working it must expect a percentage of their covers to go unsold.

[D Akey]

You're on a roll. A real student of mid century book cover style. Good work.