I've lost count of the number of times I have seen fellow authors asking for help with making a cover for their book, and I thought it might help if I created a simple guide with some of the rules and methods I think everyone should know.
I'll start off with some basic rules, and then explain how I make my own covers in future posts.
In this installment I will be discussing copyright and cover images. I feel very strongly that this is the most important aspect of finding and choosing cover images and it's not something that everyone thinks about, but it should be.
4 reasons you should make sure you have permission to use the images on your book covers:
If you use copyrighted images, you are at risk of having your work taken down. Many platforms are extremely strict about copyright infringement. When you post your work on a website or app you agree to terms and conditions which explicitly state that you should not use copyrighted images on the cover.
You are the one who is liable to pay any compensation that the photographer or artist is owed.
When you take an image you do not have permission to use, you are stealing from an artist who has poured their heart and soul into creating something that you think is beautiful. To have that beautiful work stolen is heartbreaking to the artists behind it, and it is no different to the way you would feel if you found someone had plagiarized your work.
If your work gains a following, it may cause issues if you have stolen an image for the cover. People really don't take kindly to stolen ideas and artwork, and it can spiral out of control if an artist makes a post on social media calling you out. The movie Keratin is a recent example of this. Making sure you are allowed to use the image you have chosen for your cover will protect you from a potential backlash which could destroy your career.
What should you do if you find an image you love but you don't have permission to use it?
This is something I feel passionately about because I have been lucky enough to work with some phenomenally talented photographers as a fashion designer, and I have seen firsthand how upsetting it is for them when they find their work has been stolen.
It is easy to forget that real people were involved in creating the images. It can take days for a photographer to edit a single image, and for many photographers, having work stolen is taking away an income that they need to even continue producing beautiful images.
Many photographers will allow you to use the image if you pay them a fee. In this instance they will usually retain the copyright, but you will have permission to use the image under whatever terms you agree on with them. So, they might say it's alright to use the image on a free to read book, or with credits, or that you can only use the image if you do not edit by putting a filter over it. If you reach an agreement like that you need to stick to the terms and check back with the photographer if anything changes (for example some books now are being picked up by the sites and are printed physically).
A lot of websites have stock images you can use for a fee, which in many cases is only a couple of dollars.
All three of the covers for my main series use stock images. The wolves on books one and three are a stock image I paid about $4 for, and the image on book two was a free stock image I got through a trial of Adobe Stock Images.
An important note about finding images online
Something that I should point out is that Pinterest is not a stock image site.
I didn't consider the fact that people assume they can use the images they find on Pinterest for free until I spotted a cover which uses an image that was taken by someone I know.
When I asked the author if they would change the image they had on the cover they were mortified because they thought it was just a site you download free images from.
That is definitely not the case; images on there are often under copyright, which means you do not have a right to use them for free.
If you find an image on a site like Pinterest that you love and really want to use for your cover you should check whether it is free to use, and if it isn't you can always approach the artist and ask if they will let you use the image for a fee.
I hope that this post wasn't too negative, and that I have been able to explain why it is so important to make sure you have permission to use the images for your cover. In the next installment I am going to be a bit more positive, and talk about some basic rules you should consider when designing the cover.
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