I'm not going to name the designer here, because I do not know who is at fault for my current situation. What I can tell you is that the effort to get a cover designed for my book this summer has caused me more stress then it's worth.
I hired my cover artist on the 6th of July and paid her $115 up front via PayPal (this is the price she quoted me based on what I was looking for). This was to cover a front cover, a back cover and a spine. At the time I felt I was getting an absolutely amazing deal. (I want an eBook and print version via CreateSpace -- my dream is to hold my own book.)
We corresponded back and forth during the first few days and the e-mail prior to my paying her stated that she was going to send me a mail full of potential ideas (I assumed these were going to be descriptions -- I would not *dream* of expecting an artist to create something before s/he and I agreed on it). I did not get an e-mail from this individual that discussed anything to do with my project until the 23 of August. All of the time prior to that was me trying to play mail tag and figure out why nothing was getting done. (I had given her a due date of the end of this month -- August 31st -- as I felt that would give us loads of time to decide everything and her to put it all together.)
What makes that decision very bad, and it's definitely a lesson that will stick, is that by giving this much time I have lost any form of protection via PayPal. Now, I'm not the sort of person who would likely use that anyway. And for something like this I think using that would be difficult. You can't say a piece of art is "broken" the way a piece of glass might come in the mail. But still -- it wasn't smart and it shows my lack of knowledge regarding PayPal.
She asked for information about the lead character, who we had decided should go on the front cover. I provided the details, mainly about clothing and she has sent me two models. Neither of them make sense for what I thought we were going for. I specified that my lead would likely either be wearing pastels or holiday colors (since my book takes place around Christmas). These models were wearing black and brown.
I took time to look at them and calmed down before I wrote anything. I concluded that the artist must not have been able to find someone who looked right and had what I wanted. (And keep in mind that the way this cover's focus has gone still confused me. I never intended for the aspect of the character the artist has chosen to highlight to be on the cover and I still am not certain it makes sense.)
Aside from ignoring my requests on practically everything to do with the character's appearance, she also completely avoided my questions about what font(s) she was thinking of using for the title and my name. I'm not an expert at cover design but I know these things are important and I was curious what she had in mind. Even if she had said she hadn't gotten that far yet I wouldn't be as aggravated as I am that she just brushed this aside.
I wrote her back with feedback on each image. I told her what I liked about them and I told her my concerns about them. I also told her what I "felt" when I looked at them. One was more of an active image (the model looks like she is jumping, dancing or flying) while the other has a girl in a more stand-off position (like she might be arguing with someone or debating something.)
I even went so far as I figure out a minor edit in my text that I could make which would make using the first image plausible if we chose it. My point here is that in no way have I tried to be deliberately difficult to work with.
That e-mail went to her on Sunday night / Monday morning. I still have not received a reply or any other form of acknowledgement that this individual received, read or at all considered anything that I said.
The "due date" is tomorrow, so I have to assume that she has gone ahead with whatever she decided as opposed to answering my e-mail so that we could both be on the same page with regard to making this decision. (If she was going to do that, why e-mail about it to begin with?) Of course this last bit is speculation and it is likely influenced by my long term frustration with this situation. Please excuse me. I'm usually not that quick to conclude things.
At this point I am not sure what I should do. If she sends me a cover do I use it? Am I obligated to use it? Here's the way I see things right now: regardless of what I do my money is gone. I obviously made a bad decision and did not look into this thoroughly enough. But my book is part of a series and it was / is my goal to try and work with one artist for the project so that the books will all look related to one another and since I figure(d) that will save me some trouble.
So if she does end up sending me a cover (and who knows what's going to happen and when at this point? I certainly don't.) and I use it, that means I'm going to wind up going through this again. And at this point I don't think there is a thing this person could do to salvage the situation. This has been a
nightmare.
I am not certain what I should be doing at this point. And as I said at the start, I don't know whether I've caused my own problems here or whether this just ended up being a bad situation. If anyone has any advice, it would be much appreciated. Thank you.
