So far I’ve used the same company/artist for all of my covers. He does consistent, pre-generated work that’s inexpensive but looks okay. Since my budget is limited (with the vast, vast majority of each book’s budget devoted to editing costs), that’s always been fine.
Trouble is he doesn’t do a lot of sci-fi covers, so for the last two or three books the offerings have gotten slimmer and slimmer. And while some of his covers are quite good, many of them are inappropriate (not bad, just not thematically right or the wrong sub-genre) for the kind of books I write.
So I spent a little time yesterday stretching out a bit, seeing if there was anyone else who does good quality pre-generated covers. The answer is a resounding “yes”, but the price range doubles pretty quickly without really much visible quality improvements (I suspect the higher price point is due to many of these being designed for actual physical books, rather than e-books, so the resolution and colours have to be different? But that’s a guess).
Anyway, it was still neat to do some browsing, and I’ll probably do more today. Either that or dive into the 2nd draft edits, which I should be doing… any moment now… definitely…
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!