Where does everyone get their cover art?

RoseRogan

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Hello again, another noob question here. I see all these amazing covers/cover photos for people's stories and I am wondering where ya'll are getting them? Are they free? Are the custom? Are all of ya'll super skilled in writing AND graphic design (if so that is sooo unfair :( ) Please share your secrets!
 

Azrie

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Some are custom, some are simply stolen from google images lol. A lot of the top stories tend to have custom covers though, I can only think of a handful of the top of my head with stolen covers. And all of them are erotic in some way... (Stories and the writing itself.)
 

Kldran

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Two of mine are my own personal "skill" in paint. One is a stock photo I cropped.
CultivatingChangeCover.jpg
DungeonCore.png
white-lily-5201528.png

Edit: Join the low quality paint cover users! :blob_paint:
Edit2: Double checked... I actually used GIMP.
 
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steryx

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I use Canva to make my cover. Again, some of the pictures are stolen...
 

Kotohood

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Some of them I use my awesome paint skills. Most of them, I commissioned them with Commercial use. Some I got permission to use em.(though I have a feeling that one of my covers was a stolen cover.)
 

tiaf

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Well, those who monetize their story (and are more popular) have a higher chance to have a custom cover, or at least use a free stockfoto (reason is clearly to avoid copyright issues)

Some people can draw themselves or have Art friends. I’m in this category.

And some just use google image search. Of course, that is playing with fire, if you want to make money out of your story. (Same goes for fonts. Some strictly forbid the use for commercial use) :blob_evil_two:
 

CupcakeNinja

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Hello again, another noob question here. I see all these amazing covers/cover photos for people's stories and I am wondering where ya'll are getting them? Are they free? Are the custom? Are all of ya'll super skilled in writing AND graphic design (if so that is sooo unfair :( ) Please share your secrets!
Meh. Pintrest, deviantart, google images, imgur...you cam use any image you want normally, but if you publish for money you would need to go get a comissioned cover so that you cant get sued for copyright. Likely wouldnt happen, but could, so better be safe than sorry.
 

AliceShiki

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For a one-shot I did for one of the contests the site held, I just used a stock photo and added a title to it with GIMP.

For my own story, I got images from 4 different sources, changed colors a bit, did some cropping and a few other things, then put them all together in the cover while linking to all original sources for the images in the book's description.

... For my next story I'll probably do the same, but with stock images instead.

I also recommend checking this thread out for a possible way of getting a cover: https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/use-picrew-for-your-covers.1492/
 
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since I wrote in Ao3 I don't really need covers.

but for ones in this site I either just made some random fanart or pick some random images from google.
 

CautiousTitan

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For my cover, I used a mixture of Canva and Illustrator. I learned Graphic Design as a hobby so I know how to make the covers stand out and look good. Color Theory and Typography are your friends!
For my in-progress Anime cover, I commissioned an artist that I liked. The best place to hire an artist, in my opinion, is Fiverr. The site holds the payment until you are satisfied with the delivery. This means that you will usually get what you want from a artist as opposed to being stuck with something you paid $ for
 

idaeasthesia

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Hello again, another noob question here. I see all these amazing covers/cover photos for people's stories and I am wondering where ya'll are getting them? Are they free? Are the custom? Are all of ya'll super skilled in writing AND graphic design (if so that is sooo unfair :( ) Please share your secrets!

Get a camera. Copying cover art is for noobs.

In all seriousness, BeFunky is a good image editor. A lot of simple tools you can use to edit the pictures to however you want. It has its limitations, but for something free what did you expect.
 

bananapink

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I'm actually a little thief who gets amused playing with Adobe Sparks and spends hours doing nothing but edit pics I nab from Google. It's a good thing I'm a fruit, or else I'll be thrown in jail...
 

Mejiro

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I commissioned mine - if you loiter around artist's alley at a convention, there's normally quite a few skilled artists that work pretty cheap because it's a side gig, so the art for that only cost me a tenner.
 

RoseRogan

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RoseRogan

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Thank you all so much for the useful information. I have a lot to learn but thanks to people like ya'll I might just become a decent author yet (or appear to be one lol).
 

RinDes

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I think you'll find a bit of both: custom made and stock images. As for me, I create my own, usually mixing both traditional and digital art. But I can see why not everyone would do so, whether for lack of time or skills, or just to interested in a custom cover and artwork.
 

ImFiction

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To make it short, theft. Even now, on a quick look, of the 16 fictions visible on the recent series and trending lists, 8 use someone else's artwork without permission. That's half of them. Saying "I took the picture from google images" in the description doesn't somehow make it okay. It's a copyright infringement, and unfair and damaging to the artist. I've seen some authors here make big bucks each month through patreon, using gorgeous but stolen artwork to promote their stories. Covers do sell books, as everyone well knows, but even a child should also see why it's wrong to make bank on another person's work.

Strangely enough, the people running this website have decided not to care or do anything about it. Even though the website owner can be held legally responsible for the content hosted on his/her site. Besides the original artists and the young users who aren't aware of what they're doing, this is pretty bad also for those who work hard to make their covers and post legitimate works among the heaps of frauds. Amateur covers can never rival professionals in terms of visibility and popularity, even though the professionals who made those covers never allowed their imagery to be used.
 

HantaHanna

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I used Paint. The worst choice, because a lot of readers choose a story based on the cover... But I'm not good with these programs...
 
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