When I finally decided to self-publish my first novel, I had a problem: I had written quite a few words but had no pictures. Common practice with books is to have something on the cover to sell the book. I couldn't draw and I didn't have any software the would do it for me, so I hired the only person I knew with Photoshop on her computer to do it for me for $50.
Social media has really opened my eyes to how easy it is to exchange money for services. The first time I hired someone through Instagram to create art for me, it was for a card game I was working on. I paid $30 for a hand drawn picture of an axe. It was a great axe! But it was an inspirational moment for me: I can hire anyone in the world to do this stuff for me. I just next to message them on Instagram first.
Services like Canva have also made it easy for artless folks like myself to create something respectable. When I began getting ready to publish my third book, I looked back at the 2014-ish cover art of the first two unsatisfied. A free membership to Canva and a couple of hours later produced what I thought were two fine covers:
Both of those were done with stock art, stock fonts, stock everything through Canva. Swordfight features heavily in THE LATE LORD GLASS and ASCALON is about a dragon, so those images fit well. The third book, THE WITCH AND THE TEMPLE, is about...something more complicated than any stock picture could cover. I contacted an artist through Instagram (Mac Teg, at magteg.com) and for that same $50 he drew some great custom artwork. On the left below is my terrible PowerPoint doodle of the ask. The right is his superb interpretation:
The art turned out so well that I paid extra for individual files of the rifle and arrow to use on the back cover. For $70 total, I was able to get some art that I felt really separated the book from a generic adventure story. Combined with Canva, Mac helped deliver a really great book cover.
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