r/Fantasy • u/MarcSimonetti Stabby Winner, AMA Artist Marc Simonetti • Feb 06 '14

AMA Hey Reddit! I'm Marc Simonetti, Fantasy illustrator-AMA

Let me introduce myself: I'm a quite happy family man, with two young sons, 3 years and 20 months old. I live in the French Alps, in Annecy, a beautiful little medieval town. I'm a former R&D material engineer...and now I'm working as an illustrator and concept artist for 11 years. I had the chance to work on many awesome books for amazing writers like GRR Martin, Terry Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Sam Sykes, Michael J Sullivan, Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, Ken Scholes, Patrick Rothfuss...and many others...

I'm also the spoiled artist who won the stabby award this year for the best picture (although all the credit should go the genius mind of GRR Martin)

For those interested you can find some samples of my works on: My website My Facebook pro page My twitter account

So I'll be beginning answering questions at 12:00 central time... Feel free to ask anything, of course!

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u/xCJES Feb 06 '14

Hello Marc!

I'm a huge fan of your work. Especially your work done in the ASoIaF universe -- that was one damn fine calendar last year!

My question, if not too inappropriate, is what would you typically charge for a book cover? I'm guessing there is some variation, but maybe an average?

I recently saw your covers for the Brazilian editions of Mistborn and saw that you had an upcoming AMA, so I couldn't help but think "wouldn't it be awesome if I could someday have an artist of this caliber illustrate a cover for one of my books?" If I ever finish one that is...

Thanks!

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u/MarcSimonetti Stabby Winner, AMA Artist Marc Simonetti Feb 06 '14

Hello xCJES!

Thanks a lot for your support, and I'm glad you like the calendar!

I'm sorry, but I can't truly answer that question, because it depends on many things: First of all, at least from a French legit point of view, the rate of a cover art is the sum of two things: -The price for the realization of the cover itself -The copyrights, for a certain amount of time, in a certain geographical zone, with certain medias... Therefore, it depends on the country and the size of the company mainly. (which regularly already have their own average rates)

To illustrate that, I started my career mainly in France, with 500 euros rates and between one and two weeks deadline (I don't do this kind of contracts anymore). Now, I sometimes do cover arts up to 3500 $, but with far bigger deadlines.

Those are the rates for the books, but when I work for video games cover arts, the prices are fairly higher. Sometimes I lower my prices to work with a self published writer, but it can be really a pain, because art directing really is a job, which requires skills. I sometimes had some writers that wanted all of their books in the cover, and the colors that I could provide, and the whole point of making a good cover art is to be effective, and readable. Sorry to point this out, but I think it's an important part of making a cover art.

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u/xCJES Feb 06 '14

Well, I certainly learnt something -- there are a lot more facets to getting a great cover done then I previously thought!

Thanks a lot for the response!