Design

Articles about book and cover design, as well as design as it touches on aspects of author platform.

The Speed of Self-Publishing is Best When You Go Slow

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Will you have the time?

A couple of weeks ago we took our son and his friend to lunch at Sam’s Anchor Cafe in lovely downtown Tiburon, a tony suburb of San Francisco that sticks out into the Bay. It’s a popular spot and attracts a lot of people coming from San Francisco on the delightful ferries that ply the bay. Bicyclists abound, dog walkers stroll, and there are numerous eateries to provide for people’s appetites.

Walking toward Sam’s, which features dining on its deck over the water amid sailboats moored along the piers and marinas, we spotted this parking sign: “3 Minutes Only Anytime.” Three minutes? Holy cow. There isn’t much on-street parking in Tiburon, but I was left puzzled.

What exactly can you get done in three minutes? It seems to take me about three minutes just to collect myself and get out of my car these days.

I wonder if this is just the latest sign of our rush-rush, Twitter-enabled life. Is three minute parking like microblogging for parking lot attendants? Is it just right for the ADD crowd?

 

We Have Slow Food, What About Slow Books?

This hurried aspect to life often collides with the realities of publishing. One of the common complaints about traditional publishing, with its seasonal lists, long response times, and endless editorial meetings is that it can take a long time to get into print. From acceptance of your manuscript it’s not unusual for a book to take 1.5 years to appear in bookstores.

Self-publishing cheerleaders often trumpets its ability to be more responsive, and to get to market much faster than the big guys, and that’s certainly true. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Books, by their nature, take time. Sometimes a long time. It’s understandable that an author, after spending months or years researching, writing, and re-writing their manuscript, will want to get the book to print as soon as feasible.

Taking the Time to Do It Right

But there’s no good reason to short-change the time it takes to properly edit, design, layout, and proof the book. Up front it may also take time to find a good match with an editor, to contract with a designer who can execute the right kind of design for your genre, to assemble the entire team that will be needed to produce a high quality book.

Once in motion, the team you’ve assembled will work together to produce a quality product. But this also takes time. Editing a 300-page history book, checking references, making sure citations are accurate and uniform, making style sheets to guide editors and proofreaders to the usages that occur in the book—all essential tasks that are time comsuming.

On the design side, giving your designer time to get familiar with your material, to scope out other books in your genre against which you may be competing, or with which you may be cross-selling, is time well spent. Then your designer is going to need time to come up with her unique vision for your book. In my case, I usually present three distinct and different solutions to the communication challenge that’s presented by your book. More time.

Illustrators, cover designers, indexers, proofreaders all need time to do their job properly. As publisher, it’s up to you to make sure you have the time in your schedule to allow your team to do its best work.

Having a Plan Makes Sense

You need a plan that’s based on your strategy for your book. For instance:

  • If you plan to sell through nationwide bookstore distribution, you will probably try to get prepublication reviews from the major prepub reviewers: Publishers Weekly, Libarary Journal, School Library Journal, Kirkus Review, and Foreword Magazine. You could add in the New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, BookPage, Quality Books and any book clubs you are thinking of soliciting.

    Since these review sources need Advance Review Copies with promotional material a good 4 months before your official publication date, their schedule may well dictate your publishing schedule.

     

  • If you would like to get corporate sponsorship or a promotional tie-in for the launch of your book, you will need sufficient time to pitch your proposal and sign partners before going to press. Many of these arrangements require the sponsor’s branding on the books themselves, so you need to have this in place before going to press.

     

  • If your book is tied to a holiday or other special event, you will need quite a bit of advance time to make absolutely certain you have your book in hand well before you need it. You don’t want to be sitting with 3,000 copies of your book that arrived right after the special event.

So although we live in a “hurry-up” world, taking the time to plan thoughtfully will go a long way to reducing the stress new publishers experience. Bring your “team” into your planning as soon as possible. Their experiences with previous projects will be available to you, an invaluable aid as you get ready to launch your book.

And a tip from me: that errand will take longer than 3 minutes. Pull around the corner and park somewhere else.

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer site.

Small Ads Can be Beautiful and Work, too!

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Let’s talk about producing an ad design for your book. You’ve already assembled your media information, and narrowed down the potential venues to the ones you believe will give you the best targeted exposure for your money. On one side, you’ve got a list of the venues, sizes and color considerations that fit your budget. On the other, you’ve listed your “If only…” publications and online venues. These are usually places you’d like to see your ad based upon such careful research as “Wouldn’t my ad look great there! I’d be so proud!” They are usually the kind of venues that would somehow give credibility to your book, just for the association with the venue.

First…

First thing, pick up the “If only…” list, crumple it up, and throw it into the nearest circular file. Advertising venues don’t exist to grace your book by hosting your advertising. They exist to obtain your money in exchange for space. All the credibility you need, assuming you haven’t rushed the book to market without adequate editing and developmental re-writing, is in the fact that your book is complete and ready for sale. You’ve already achieved much more than most writers in just sticking to your guns and believing in your story.

Cost-Effective is the Key to Effective Design…

Now that we’re back to the work-table, and the “what-ifs” are buried properly, we’re going to prepare some cost-effective advertising to test the waters for your book. You’ll be testing each of the affordable venues to see if you can detect an edge for one over another. The results you are looking for are track-able inquiries for your book. It might show up as online click-throughs, impressions, or some other media-generated term that implies your ad was read. Each medium will have its own language and explanation for the fees you will be paying, so pay attention, and make sure you are set up to record and watch the results.

 

Let me make the point here, that IMHO, any reasonably skilled idiot can produce a beautiful, effective full-page ad.  It’s much, much harder to create an effective ad in 1/8 page or smaller, so assume the challenge. "Man" (or woman) up, here! You’ll be proud of what you can do in almost no space at all, if it is handled right.

Vector art, not "Paint Program" art…

Then, if you haven’t already done so, acquire a vector-based graphics and layout program. I was never able to justify the huge added cost of the Adobe, Quark and other “professional” caliber software. My design business was able to produce excellent results using CorelDraw and a few shareware add-ons. Since I didn’t have to a share files very often with other designers, it wasn’t worth paying twice the price for a program that really only did the same basic job. Same thing goes for the argument to buy a Mac rather than use your PC. I’ve been using a PC to do four-color separations and high-end, high resolution graphics since I threw out my color markers, around 1988. So do the best you can afford – don’t overextend yourself. It’s not as much the software as the brain behind it anyway.

 

Why Vector and not a “paint” program alone? Because you can achieve more with a vector program and have cleaner results. There are vector images, and there are bitmapped images. Vector images are mathematically-expressed descriptions of the outline of an object, which is then “filled” with coloor, or what have you. A bit mapped image , like a jpeg, is a collection of thousands (even Millions!) of tiny square, pieces of the whole.

Bitmap issues…

Bitmaps are resolved to be clear and fine in one resolution setting, one size. Vector images can be manipulated in size and shape with no diminishing of their final resolution or appearance. In the old, photo-mechanical graphics trade, we used to talk about generations of degradation in images, even type headlines. Each change in size, etc. used to cost about 10% of the clarity of the image. The more changes, the worse each image got. That holds true with bitmaps. It’s best to only have to re-scale and adjust a bitmap once, if at all possible, for the best results.

Vector benefits…

But with a vector image, it doesn’t matter how many times you tweak it, it will be perfect when you are ready for output. If, for example, your headline type is bitmapped type, then if you need to make it a bit taller and a bit narrower, the results will probably be less crisp than the original. If a headline needs to be tweaked with vector type, such as True Type fonts, then after the font is happily residing in your outline of a box as a headline, it can be tweaked as much as you want, height, width, letter spacing, etc., etc., with no ill effects in resolution at the output stage. I like Vector artwork for the same reason. Look exactly like a hand-rendered illustration with all the benefits explained above. You’ll still import any bitmapped photographic images into the vector program where you can now add type overprints and reverses with no ill-effects!  Anyway, onward…

First, the Headline…

I start every ad with a group of possible headlines. These are the calling cards for the concepts they represent. The idea, of course, is to motivate the reader to an action. The action, in print, may be to complete an inquiry form, or take a coupon to a book seller, or just copy down an online url for a later visit. The latter, in a print ad, is very difficult to track, beyond hoping for increased sales. Print advertising is generally more expensive, and generally needs more space to achieve trackable results, as you will need to allow for a form or a coupon, or you can utilize the numbered response service offered by some publications – at a higher price. I recommend, that for the most cost-effective use of your budget, you should do most of your initial testing online.

 

Online advertising venues include social sites, discussion forums, special interest sites (including merchandise that may relate to your reader’s interest) and of course blog sites. You’ve already got a few of these in your list of possibles, so lets, just for clarity’s sake say three have similar space size, resolution and color requirements. You’re, of course, going to use full color in your ad, unless you have a very compelling reason not to do so. Your book’s content will determine the best way to market it, and you may have a specific idea of an ad layout featuring black and white, with just a touch of color in exactly the right spot to grab the eye and get your meaning across – say a single drop of red blood, poised to drip off the end of your book’s title.

 

A hard-hitting ad is one that forces the reader to read it. It can’t be ignored and will stand out from other ads on the page upon which it’s presented. You need to test this phenomena by scooting your computer chair away from the screen for a moment, a bit further than arm’s length and while looking at a typical “page” on the venue you’re considering, see which ad or ads immediately grab your eye, even (especially!) if you can;t read them. These ads have an arresting design going for them, and after you’ve tested this a few times in different venues, you’ll get a good idea of what you’;re trying to achieve graphically.

 

The headline can’t be too long. Preferably, it will be two to four words, which will tell the reader to do something. A short, directive subheading is also a good idea, but it shouldn’t have to “explain” the headline. The headline should also, of course, be VERY legible. At arm’s length (my arm is pretty long — even better), whether in print or online, it should still jump off the page. In a small ad, with little room to sell, the headline should dominate the layout.

Legible! Legible! Legible!

Don’t use fancy type here unless you can test its legibility.  There are both serif (type with feet) and sans serif (no feet) type fonts that have lots of punch without losing any legibili8ty.  Choose one that "fits" with your book’s content, as to formal vs informal, business vs how to,  modern fiction vs literary. Look at book covers that work with ther content and see what type fonts are chosen. Find one you like, but also one that works well.

 

  If the type face is too busy, it will detract from the effectiveness of the message, while the reader has to figure it out. One exception might be using type that is so associated with your book’s content, the nature of the type face chosen accents the message. For example, you’ve written a thriller about a kidnapping. There are display typefaces that resemble the cliched “Ransom Note” made up of cut-out letters from magazines, etc. If you keep the headline short, the overall “design” is something the reader is probably already familiar with, so they don’t have to figure it out, only read it.

 

Another example, you’ve written the latest post-post-modern coming of age story set within in a dysfunctional family (maybe they are also vampires, but that’s another subject…). You might want to capture some of the essence of the story by using a “fractured-look” typeface, but again, it must be legible, legible, legible. The headline is the hook.

Color? Of course!

You may want to incorporate a full color background, a section of your book’s cover (for recognition’s sake) or say a related object. Keep it simple, and keep the type legible. Whether the type is reversed or “knocked out” of a color background to show in white or a highly contrasting color, or whether it stands alone in color itself, be sure it still jumps off the page. If using a section of your cover photograph, or illustration, be sure it is a section that when cropped down to a small sizer, is still recognizable, or that relates to the book’s content.

 

If your book isn’t fiction, but an instructive book, or a specific subject non-fiction, concentrate on a detail that your reader would respond to, and make that your “hook” graphic. This is the one, dominant graphic element that holds the reader’s eye, once the headline has done its job. Of course, if your book’s cover artwork has little to do with the content, beyond carrying the title and other information, then I wouldn’t recommend using it in this manner. I’d build my ad using type only or type plus color plus object. The hold-em graphic should always relate strongly to the content, and if your headline is a question – which is a great idea, as long as the answer can’t be “no” – then it should embellish or further associate the reader to the answer. The answer being, of course, within your book. I’ll give you an example in my own book ad.

An example of a small online ad:

 

 The ad runs regularly here and on a few blog and discussion sites. It is pretty small, as you can see. What I wanted to do was create recognition, and motivate the reader to click through. I use the title of the book to set up a question: “What red gate?” “Where?” Why is this important to me”, then use the subhead to direct the reader to act: Uncover the secret.

 

The small "triskelle" graphic below the subhead is instantly recognizable to readers with an interest in Celtic or Irish traditions, which "places" my bokk’s subject with little clutter. The overall photo section from the cover of the book sets up a mysterious, disturbing emotion, plkus it creates bookstore and online regcognition.

 

The really great thing about online ads is that all the reader has to do is click! You don’t have to add space for contact information, or anything else at all – that will reside on the link that comes up, of course! My ad links directly to Amazon, where they can sample the book, see it’s full cover, read reviews, and click once to buy! I leave a lot of the selling to Amazon. All my ad has to do is get them to click on it to get some questions answered.

 

One of the things that can be very useful in online advertising as in print campaigns, is to vary the copy. Changing the subheading can actually, with enough time and a good sequence, set up the reader to “look forward” to seeing the next one in the series. It also allows you to fine-tune your ads until they work the best they can, in the given venue.

 

I’ve also used a display typeface that is legible, but that also conveys the concept of antiquity. This alone adds more information. To the reader: uncover “ancient” secrets. In other words, "want to uncover these secrets? click the ad!"

 

You’ll notice that in my ad, I don’t even put my name in. My name doesn’t mean anything to the reader…yet. It isn’t important enough as a motivator to take up space. Maybe in a few years’ time it will be, but I’m not fooling myself – right now, it’s a zero when it comes to setting up a reader to click on my ad. It does exist on the cover of the book, of course, and when they click through, they’ll have access to as much information as they need to make the decision to buy.

Print considerations….

In print advertising, the creative work is more difficult because you need to push much harder setting up the reader’s motivation to action. In print, the action requires more from the reader than it does online. You’re, at the very least, asking them to remember your ad. Remember? In this A.D.D. World? If you need to actually do more than set up recognition for eventual book store or online action, then you will need to incorporate a device such as a coupon, contact information, a “reader service number” etc.

 

However, in magazine print, you have a lot more detail possible, as the resolution is usually pretty high. Newsprint can be hard for bitmapped photographic images in small sizes as the resoluition is very low.  You need to choose your eloements based upon the printed resolution. 

 

Keep it simple, Don’t ask too much of the reader of your ad. Make it easy for them to respond. Make everything as legible as it can be, and be sure to allow all the room they will need to respond properly, if it’s a cut-out form. More important, because you’re asking more from them, you have to make it worth their while. Offer them a discount, then be sure to make it enough that the savings are actually a factor, and not just “lipservice” Offer Free Shipping. Offer a Free Read. Free: the most effective word used in headlines in print when it comes to response.

Layout Issues….

Finally, set up the components of the ad in a motivating design. We’ve discussed some of the frameworks to creating an effective cover design, so use these in your ad as well. Reinforce the circular form of the reader’s eye movement to holed them in the ad. Have the various components “feed” the readers eye and lead into the next component. The idea is to hold them as long as possible. Give the individual components breathing room. Don’t crowd them against each other, for example, unless confusion and confrontation is the feeling you’re trying to achieve. If they stick with your ad long enough to actually process some thoughts about what you’re pitching, you’ve won the battle – the chances are you’ve bagged ’em.

Wrap it up with alternatives….

Finally, once you have a working layout, try making up a few alternates, using different colors, different type faces, different key graphics, so that you can place these upon examples of the pages they’d be inserted in (I always thought it was funny that that was the verb used to describe your ad being added to a page pf media, but then my humor can be pretty sophomoric…) so you can test how they come across in the actual environment where they will appear to the reader. Almost every ad layout looks great on a page of white space. What else can your eye be drawn to? Try it with other ads above and below, and in print, side to side, where unless it’s really good, it will be buried. If it works like this, and try it with a few people if you can, then it will do it’s job and you’ll get the best bang for your bucks.

 

Next week: Output — mechanical requirements, resolutions, file formats, and other jargon-riddled detail. This is what you send to the ad venue.

 

Create Hard-Hitting Ads for Your Book…

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Hard hitting? Well, that particular expression may be a bit dated, but the old idea is to clobber the reader with intent. Nothing’s changed.  Any ad, whether it appears in print or online, is intended to motivate the reader to BUY your product, or at least allow themselves to be pitched. We’ve discussed how important it is in book marketing to define just who your reader actually is. Now it’s time to utilize a relatively inexpensive device to reach out and grab their attention.

 

A simple tool…

Ads are communication tools, nothing more. They are part of a complete marketing plan. Ads can either be designed for a mass market, or targeted to a specific niche. It all depends upon the medium carrying the advertising, and it’s positioning in the medium, as to which the ad should be be designed for.  You need to focus on who you intend the ad to reach.

So before you even consider running advertising, do your research to find several different publications, or online sites, including social networking and blog sites where you are pretty sure your market can be found. If you are truly intrepid, you’ll take the time to contact the advertisers you see in these locations to find out how effective their experience with that medium has been. If your product is not perceived by the advertiser as direct competition, you may be lucky enough to get some really useful information.

Questions you might ask after the initial introduction and explanation (should you be lucky enough to get a favorable response) run through ad sizes used, positions that were found effective, and any seasonal adjustments the advertiser made or considered making. Was the artwork varied? Did the message vary? Which worked the best? The answers will help you parse your list down to the ones you believe will help you reach your market.

Media Kits…

Once you have made a “list” of potential locations and have some idea of how well they will work for your needs, contact the webmaster or their own advertising department to get their “media” kit. A typical media kit (or advertising insertion page, if online) will usually include some demographic data regarding their readers, which can in most cases be considered accurate (if not spun in whatever direction they intend). Print media must provide factual circulation information by law, but the internet, as you know by now, is not so well-regulated, so proceed with “Caveat Emptor” playing softly in the background.

A media kit will also have the publication, or website’s requirements regarding size, image resolution, linking limitations(for online ads) and, of course, cost. I’ve always looked for the smallest ad space that will effectively stop my own eye when skimming a publication or site. I’m especially careful if the publication or site tends to relegate smaller ads to their own pages rather than inserting them within the content. While a “Buying Guide” page format may work for some products seasonally, being stuck in with a bunch of tiny ads doesn’t usually give you the best visibility, unless it is specifically targeted towards buyers of YOUR product. I prefer to run my ads where they can appear with content or editorial material. The reader’s attention will be focused on that page longer, so you’ll get better chances to grab it. If that kind of position means buying slightly “upmarket” (Oh, how I just love the old jargon…), then by all means do so, unless your budget can’t really handle it.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume you’ve decided on a specific medium and location, and need to choose your ad’s size. One thing to keep in mind is that, unless you have unlimited funds, the right size is the smallest size that will carry everything you need to say, effectively. Effectively means legibly and with as much impact as can be mustered. Even a nice, big ad, if poorly conceived and badly executed will not have any results beyond emptying your wallet.

Never say no…

The idea here is to reduce your pitch to its simplest, most direct terms: “Want to find out?” “Buy this book”. One thing I always do when beginning to conceive ad copy, is to NEVER allow any question you pose to be answered by the reader, “no”. Questions are good things, but they must persuade the reader to respond in the way you intend. So, create a few alternatives and ask friends, other writers, people you meet (all carefully selected to be confirmed “members” of your target reader group, of course) which question holds their attention longer. It should be short, and to the point. It should convey emotion, and be connected – even obliquely – with the subject of your book. Just be sure that none of the possibilities can be answered by “no”, such as “Do you need to know what happened to little Judy?”

To get them to actually read your ad you’ll use graphics initially, to draw them in. We’ve discussed the importance of color in designing a book jacket and expanded that to using cover graphics in collateral pieces, such as bookmarks and flyers (The “One Page” that most book sellers and distributors expect to see). This carries over into print and online advertising as well. If you have designed an effective cover, then the chances are that an element of your cover graphics will make an effective ad. It also creates recognition for your book, by planting the seed, which may be useful later, as your reader browses a bookstore’s shelves and tables.

Use what you’ve already got…

If your cover conveys a particular emotion, as it should, then by all means, USE that in setting up your hook copy. Always bear in mind, however, that the reader of your ad will have less than a second to make the decision to read your copy, so keep it short and to the point. One real benefit of online advertising is that you don’t need to use up ad space with contact information. That’s what the link does for you.

Do it now: Click!

Just a single click, and your reader is transported to the wonderful world of online retail and sublime pitching. They don’t have to write down your bookseller’s address or remember a phone number! All they have to do is click that mouse button! That single act is what your online advertising is designed to do – get them to click on your ad. You don’t even have to direct them to do so – just make the ad compelling enough and they’ll do it.

One really good tool, that most ad responders appreciate, is the use of the link attribute “target”. I use target = “_blank” when setting up ad link codes, so that the link opens in its own new window, making a return to the medium content very easy. Look for it, if you’re using an online form for links. Using it, you’ll have moved the reader to a new stage where your pitch in all its glory can unfold properly.

Print ads are much more difficult to control and predict response in that they demand a lot of a reader. I believe it is better to use smaller print advertising to simply create recognition for your product. You’ll have other ways to draw them in once recognition is established.

For a reader of a print ad to respond directly, they will have to retain or write down the information you direct them to. If you pose a compelling question or make a strong statement in a compelling graphic setting and they see it enough times, your target reader may be motivated to respond when they are in, or close to a retail venue. Or they may respond in other ways leading to an eventual sale such as giving them the idea that your book is a wonderful gift for someone “special” (insert qualifier here).

Track, track and track…

Another device used for ads in print, besides creating recognition, is to offer the reader an opportunity to express themselves. This may be still easier to work into an online ad. Your ad may carry a suggestion that the reader’s own opinions or experiences are somehow meaningful to you, and you’d like to hear from them.

Responses from your advertised invitation can lead to your gathering a lot of data regarding the effectiveness of that medium and your ad design, but it can also overwhelm your in-box if you’ve done your job well, so use it with care. Always be sure to set up a special email address for this kind of response, so that your private in-box doesn’t get spammed. You can usually set up several “child” email accounts with most IPs, so that you can easily separate responses by mediums, etc.

Another tracking/response device you can use effectively, that also doubles as a direct sales motivator is the “coupon” code that will save the reader money. Savings appeal to almost everyone and depending upon your target readers, may be an important element to any ad you design. Specific coupon “codes” you create are also useful in tracking which mediums are more productive, so you use your media budget most effectively.

Of course, if budget is no consideration, you can just fill up the available media slots with your pitch, but most of us need to keep our costs down. Consider that each new use of any medium is really a test for that medium and for your ad’s effectiveness. Give it a few cycles to get enough exposure to determine if it works. If it doesn’t…move on. Find another medium on your list, or if you’re absolutely sure that your readers inhabit that medium, change your ad design.

Arriving at the correct mix of ad copy, design and media placement is an art that needs lots of cultivation. That’s why the top agencies and marketing consultants make the big bucks, but if you approach the entire process as a learning opportunity, you’ll be rewarded for your efforts in lots of ways you won’t even think of when you begin. The nuts and bolts may litter the floor when we’re finished, and you may have some sweeping up to do, but you’ll know where you want to go and how to get there.

Next week: Ad layout: What to keep in, what to throw out. Small can be good!

  

Designing Books

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The title refers to two types of book designing:

  • Book Interiors
  • Book Covers

Book Interiors

The design and layout of a book is both art and practicality. It’s important that art is pleasing, but it should not get in the way of a designer’s mission. I’m sure most of us have seen books where the design became so complex or even jarring that it became distracting. Better that the art be plain but subtly supportive. If the book is a military thriller about snipers, it would be appropriate to use a small rifle scope’s crosshairs as a text break or as a small decorative by the page number. A fantasy based in Olde England might be well served with a celtic decorative capital letter for a drop cap. This is what I mean when I say supportive of the book’s theme.

The selection of fonts must balance and make sense, with none over-riding the others for attention. Most importantly is their practical importance of enhancing readability while subtlety supporting the book’s theme. Font selection also has direct impact on page count, and therefore, production affordability. When I work with a client, I see the decisions about all these elements and more parts of an iterative process. Design suggestions go back and forth with the client involved at every step for his education and acknowledgement that she is the boss who has to live with the resulting product. A designer should never attempt to force a design without giving good reasons.

Book Cover Design

First, let me acknowledge to the world I am no artist or illustrator. Instead, I am a book retailer , an author, a publisher, and a book reviewer. Last year, I was one of three judges of fiction book cover judges for the Ben Franklin Awards. In other years, I have also judged the writing in general fiction and mystery/thriller categories. What has been gratifying is that in every case and every category, the three judges all picked at least 2 of the top 3 choices in the blind with no knowledge of or communication among one another. What that says is, the cream will rise to the top. That is certainly the case for book cover designs.

Here is where I have to put on my retailer hat. The next time you’re in a bookstore, watch the shoppers. See what catches their eyes. Observe what draws them to pick out a book from the shelf (even those with only their spines showing). How far away were they? What didn’t they pick up? This is all about marketability. In an earlier blog I talked about getting seen above the grass. That is what takes place literally.

Color and graphics and treatment of fonts matter. This is definitely the realm of the artist; however, that person must be both excellent at her craft and understand how to portray the book’s theme visually. Recently, vampires are all the rage. That’s a very dark theme! Unfortunately, the covers end up being very dark, if not black, as well. The next time you’re in that bookstore, notice how much alike they all look. Is that being seen above the grass? Nope! What if on that black background there was a profusion of yellows and oranges (flames of hell perhaps)? What if the evil vampire has a purple cloak with gold ornaments and the threatened heroine is dressed in virginal white? Wouldn’t that be more eye catching and distinctive. Could someone see that from 10 feet away and find it more enticing to one’s curiosity apart from the other vampire books surrounding it?

Bright, varied colors work well, and so do light backgrounds with simple designs. Whatever the genre, your design needs to be somewhat different from other books that may physically surround it on the shelf.

Again, I am not a cover designer. I job that task out to illustrators to whom I have given the above lesson. That has worked well for us. I stand in awe of visually oriented talented people. I’m a writer and a musician, but I’m also a communicator. All these elements have to play together for successful book presentation, marketing, readability, and putting the readers in the right frame of mind. Help them escape into the magic of the book!

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear’s Book Trends blog.

Publish A Book With Your Literary Tweets

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This post, from Polish author Nick Name, originally appeared on his Password Incorrect site on 10/15/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Have you ever thought of making an e-book with your literary tweets? If you still have doubts, consider this: you can easily do it yourself, you can do it without any cost, and you can use the book as a promotional tool.

A free cover for your Twitter bookHere are some tips based on my personal experience. Just make sure you’ve got a large coffee ready – and make your book happen!

How to collect content?

Twitter search is currently showing results from 9 recent days. Nobody will find your fantastic tweet if it’s 10 days old. 10 days means  “gone”.

It might be difficult even for you to collect your own Twitter stream. And here is a rescue: Tweetbook. It’s a wonderful web service, where you can make a pdf or xml file with your tweets (up to 3200). Having all of them in one editable document will make it really easy to select the golden ones – those you want in your book.

Tip: if you want to have a constant access to your tweets, you can subscribe to your Twitter profile’s feed. From now on all the updates will be collected in your RSS reader.

Where to publish?

There are a few really wonderful sites where authors can self-publish in addition to Smashwords or Manybooks. Feedbooks is my favourite one. Here is why:

:. creating a book is extremely easy. Just copy and paste a piece of text into blog-like fields. A very useful feature is the ability to structure a book on different levels: parts, chapters, sections. If you do so, the table of contents is clickable afterwards, which makes it easy to navigate through the book. This is a unique feature, I didn’t find it anywhere else

:. Feedbooks fully supports mobile reading. Major formats are ePub and mobi, which make a book friendly for reading on cellphones and eReaders. Having in mind that Twitter is being consumed mostly from the mobile web, it’s good to be there

:. apart from public domain books, there is a quickly growing section of original self-published books. Recently a new book list has started, 140 characters, with Twitter-based fiction. Just make sure you include “Twitter” as a tag for your book, and you’ll surely find yourself on the list.

What about a cover?

For many authors the book cover seems to be a killing problem. They can’t design it themselves, they don’t know any designer who would do it for free, and they’re afraid to ask. Well, there are at least three ways to deal with that:

:. every site for self-publishers shows a default cover. At Feedbooks there is additionally a title and author’s name shown on a cover, which is a really nice feature

:. you can choose from a collection of free covers I’ve prepared for self-published Twitter authors like myself

:. as soon as you have a selection of tweets made, you can use the brilliant Wordle word cloud generator to make a cover design for you. Read here how to do that.

How to benefit from a book?

As soon as your book is published, you can use it for promotional activities:

:. in addition to your current literary tweets, you can send a link to your book from time to time

:. show a book on your blog; you’re a published author, let everybody know it

:. share your book on other platforms, let it appear in as many places as possible. It’s a finished and lasting work, link to it from your profile on Posterous, Bebo, LiveJournal, even if you don’t use them frequently

:. if you want to try reaching a book agent or a publisher, having a published book is an asset. Sending an e-mail with a book attached (f.e. in pdf format) makes it more probable to draw attention

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: there’s a variance of opinion on this, but in the U.S. at least, most agents don’t want to receive unsolicited attachments of full manuscripts. However, you can always use your Twitter book to help build your readership and expand your author platform by sharing the book—or just excerpts from it—on your author website or blog]

:. your book is at the same time an easily accessible archive of your best tweets. Send them again, from time to time, there might be people who haven’t yet discovered how good you are. 

Note: if you’ve found this post useful, I would be grateful if you could just download my Twitter-fiction book, share it with your friends and leave a comment.

 

The Old, Mean, Re-formatting Blues

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After working on a computer everyday for more than 25 years, I usually feel pretty confident tackling software issues.  I’m a real, nuts and bolts kind of guy anyway, so fixing whatever comes up is really second nature for me.

Well, today I have to be honest – I’ve been laid pretty low by the need to reformat my first book manuscript for wide, e-book use.  Most of the problems I’m experiencing are my own creation. I only have myself to blame, so along with the mea culpas, I’ll share what has led me to the re-formatting blues, so you won’t need to go there yourself.

Sales of E-books, in a range of formats, have increased steadily at a rate eclipsing paper books consistently this year.  The growth figure I recently read in an interview with Smashwords founder, Mark Coker, is 58%.  58% is a number too large to ignore.  Now personally, I’ll probably never read more than a couple of pages online – I’m old school when it comes to pleasure reading.  But, as every writer should know, potential markets can’t be ignored if you intend to sell your books.  So, it’s time for the old guy to embrace some new ideas.

If you’re happily writing away and converting your documents to e-book-useable formats without a care, then you may only find this week’s column mildly entertaining.  If you’re like lots of other writers, pretty set in your work habits and the software you use, then read on…but don’t do as I’ve done. It’s not pretty.

Word Processors are Not Equal

I’ve been working with my trusty, old word processing program for more than 15 years now.  I really like it.  There aren’t any real bells or whistles to annoy or distract me, and for chapter-based writing, the organization has always been very workable.  I’m speaking of Word Perfect.  Now, I’m not a luddite – I keep it updated and use most of it’s rich feature set.  I produced my first book’s print design using it, short stories, articles for press and online media, pitch letters, advertising copy, business correspondence, and the results look good, and read well.  No problems at all.

I just didn’t see them coming.  MS Word is the preferred word processor in use today.  Believe it. For those who grew up in the Microsoft era, there has never really been any other choice.  I’ve always used MS products grudgingly.  I don’t like the cute icons, spinning symbols, or (what I consider) really arcane menu layouts and placements.  I like my basic WP, but all that has had to change.

When in Tome… 

E-book formats like MS Word files for conversion. Many of the E-book formats can be proprietary, and they usually include a wealth of flexibility in how their content may be read on screen.  This is a very important concept, which requires your manuscript to be quite a bit less “linear” than your print manuscript.  Herein lies the problem.  MS Word is set up to format documents — font, paragraph and chapter — using specific elements that are easily understood and translated by most E-Book software currently written.  To put it simply, Word Perfect just can’t get there from here. 

WP, like all word processors, has a wealth of included export algorithms designed for sharing documents among a group of different platforms and software.  It, unfortunately – at least with the current iteration — formats its documents in certain proprietary ways which, when exported to MS Word formats, or Rich-Text formats usually result in unexpected garbage characters, dropped characters, translation glitches and other hair-tearing excercises.

What You See is Not What You Want…

For example, after five separate attempts to upload my exported MS Word files to Smashwords with no success, I sent up a flare for some help.  Mark Coker, personally it turns out, took a look at what I had sent, then summed it up by saying – you’re trying to convert from WP – it really can’t be done.  Select, Cut and Paste the entire document into Notepad (386 pages in trade paperback format, 96KPlus words), supposedly stripping all formatting controls from the document, then import it into MS Word.  Good Luck.

I needed more than that.  I needed a transfusion. After downloading the simplest version of MS Word, with a 60 day trial period, I followed his direction. The document that resulted had gone from a tiny few typos and grammatical/punctuation errors, into a disaster of page-by-page close editing which will require many, many days of hard work.  Here are some of the highlights:

1.  Menus:
It took me two solid days to figure out that the normal menu commands such as Open, Select, Edit, Save, Save As, etc., were hidden under a cute, cartouche icon at the top left.  Like an idiot, I kept running my mouse over the top of the document/tool bar watching as a huge variety of item opened up, usually not what I was trying to find.  Go ahead, click the cute little icon – it won’t bite.  Watch out that you inadvertently leave the “home” page.  Beyond there be dragons.

2.  Redundancies
Unlike my trusty old WP, MS Word is full of command and applet redundancies – you’ll probably find what you want in several places, often at once!  It can get a little confusing.  I might actually have to find a “Dummies” book to learn how to use the program efficiently.  How embarassing! I hope I don’t see anyone I know at the book store.

3. Find & Replace
Probably my favorite function in word processors, after the ability to select and delete entire sections – dispatching all the awful blither into the ether with a single click.  When I saw the awful results of the file conversion from WP into MSW, I first had to stop my hands from shaking.  After a few deep breaths, I thought: No Biggie. I’ll use Find & Replace and deal with it all in a few short steps.  Wrong again.  MSW’s F&R, is not tense sensitive.  At least not in my copy, or with my limited grasp of it’s huge feature set. 

The conversion, among other things, turned all the leading quotation marks in the entire book, in every single instance of dialog, into capital “A”s.  OK, starting with the most numerous instance, I chose to replace the opening of each dialog sentence which began “I….  So I entered “AI” into the Find text box, and “I into the replace box. Click.

Ohmygod! Now every word in the entire manuscript with the letters “AI” OR “ai” in them have been changed to “I.  Like the word ag”In, for example, or the word r”In, or the word refr”In…you get the idea.  F&R had now become my bane, not my buddy.

The rest of the file contained several other cute instances of reformatting-introduced spelling and grammatical errors which has required very careful editing.  Another fun example: all M-dashes have suddenly become capital "B".  There are several more. It’s been more like a complete, page-by-page re-write.  I’m now finished with 20 chapters – only 10 more to go.  It’ll be a hard lesson, but when I’m finished, I’ll have something I should have had from step one any way: an unformatted version of my manuscript. 

Keep it Simple. Keep a copy.

It would have been a simple thing to rename the original, edited, re-written, ready for prime-time file to an easy-to-remember name that implied no formatting.  Instead, I went about my merry way, formatting my manuscript into publication format, including such absolute no-nos (for E-Books) such as drop caps, large bold chapter headings in different fonts, page numbering, footnotes with call-outs and more than three carriage returns to set off chapter headings, which an e-book file will interpret as a blank page! All of these must die for your E-book to live.

Always save an unformatted, current version of your book.  Be sure it also is set up to letter sized page, uses 12 point type and has a 1 ½" margin left and 1" margins all around.  This is what an agent will want to receive along with your pitch, should your desire to be an Indie Author become too much work. Just kidding.

I may not like Courier, but E-Books love Courier.

If you’re going to sell E-Book versions of your work, you’d better get on the band wagon. Like me, learn to love MS Word, Courier, and MS’ other designed for online text fonts. Resist the gnawing temptation to design a good-looking page in favor of a utilitarian ethic.  Learn to enjoy tickling the cute little icons and chasing down the menus.  It’s a new age of publishing and if you don’t learn the new strokes, you’ll sink!  But remember, once you’re in the water’s fine, or at least…wet.

Oh, I should probably add; I wrote the first draft of this article in Word Perfect. I guess some old habits are just too comfortable to change.

 

 

Crafting a Cover, Part II…Making Relationships Work….

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Last week we covered the use of photography in your book cover to create a simple, attention-grabbing cover image.  This week we’ll look into why some colors seem to work better than others on bookstore shelves.  We’ll also investigate good layout and design practices when it comes to typography and non-photographic covers.  It’s all about relationships.

Natural Design…(Not necessarily on the test)

There was an important mid 20th Century school of design, the brainchild of Swiss-French architect and designer LeCorbusier, which at its root broke all design proportions down into fifths, corresponding to the five element of the human form: arms, legs and head. Because that is how we’re laid out, he intuited, we would be most comfortable living and viewing designs which incorporate these proportions.

I don’t know if he was right or not, but to me, layouts along these line intersections seem to “work” better than others.  If it works for me, and it may work for you as well. Of course, the idea is NOT to fill all these intersections up with content!  The idea is to set up natural alignments of only the necessary elements to your cover design. Create relationships between elements. Some of the individual elements may also be parts of your photo image.  Look inside the photo.  Considering also the typical eye movements of the reader. Combining these into an effective cover is our goal.  A cover with these kept in mind will be more effective, because it will tie-in to the reader’s mind and emotions naturally – not in a awkward, contrived way which sets up it’s own conflicts.

Design Color Points from Nature…

When designing a book cover, don’t make the mistake of minimizing the importance of color.  Color adds important elements to your cover and reactions in the reader all by itself.  The intelligent use of color will help elicit the intended response in your cover’s reader. Most of these reactions are natural and predictable, as their basis is nature itself.

Yellow animals, for the most part are dangerous to humans, including Yellowjacket wasps and poison dart frogs.  The use of striped yellow and black on barriers for protection is not just by chance.  The combination means DANGER, subconsciously and it seems to be hardwired into our genetics.  Color is an integral part of how our emotions are connected to our conscious thought.  There are color-relationships that have been proven in behavioral studies that you can use effectively in your choices. 

Red for example, is connected with excitement and alarm. Blue with serenity and sleep. Green is naturally connected with healing and growth.  One of my favorite examples is how often the walls in maximum security psychiatric prisons are often painted a soft shade of pink!  Pink seems to calm us and is one of the most non-confrontational colors.

When approaching a color choice for your cover, first try to summarize the mood of your work. how do you want the reader to feel when reading it?  Is there a specific emotion that your book revolves around – an emotional “glue”?  Once you’ve determined what that is, you can choose from images, and design elements that will help communicate this instantly to the reader, side-stepping the need to read the title or other cover copy at all.  The point is – don’t leave anything up to chance here.  Control every step along the way.

Adding Conflict with Contrast…

One of the easiest ways to add a sense of conflict to a cover design is by creating areas of extreme contrast within the layout.  These might include large size differences of elements, extreme color contrasts or the use of display typography in contrast to other elements or to itself.

Look through covers and book jackets in your own bookshelves and set aside the six or so that are instantly exciting and attention grabbing.  Now, with your notepad, quickly jot down the first three things that come to your mind when viewing these, one-by-one.  The title or author’s name doesn’t count right now. Although the importance of recognition and/or “branding” can’t be dismissed, what we’re trying to do here is train your eye to see the emotional content of an overall cover design. 

Set your notes aside, then come back to them later, and see if you’ve written down the same “feelings” for more than a couple of your chosen covers.  If that is the case, then, for you, those covers have effectively done what the designer intended.. You bought the books, didn’t you?

The Letter-perfect Cover design…

Having trained your eye to begin to separate out the Elements of contrast and color we finally move into the realm of Title and Author’s Name.  Typography is a tricky subject.  It involves both our emotional responses and our thinking.  Letterforms vary not just in size and shape. They are each small graphic elements that contain intentional stresses and suggest certain emotional responses completely apart from their utility as carriers of language. 

Find a site online which sells typography – fontmarketplace is one I use – and look through some examples of display fonts.  Most sites will have typography pages that show entire fonts (all the letters, numbers and characters) Some of these will be extremely ornate – overpowering the eye unless used in very short, concise headlines.  If a type face design is very complicated, graphically, it has the tendency to confuse the eye, or lead it in too many directions – if confusion is your goal, this might work well for your cover – assuming a very simple title, of course. 

There will be many others which are much simpler. They may contain very subtle differences in the “thicks” and thins”, called stresses by type designers, that lend emotion and recognition while still remaining legible even in smaller sizes.  These are the fonts you will probably find most useful.  Some of these, like the sans-serif (no little feet on the ends of ascenders or descenders or along the baseline) font Machine, can be very powerful in establishing high-contrast and conflict, based upon their ponderous letterforms.  Others, such as Eras, or the font I use in my cover for The Red Gate, Papyrus, are very subtle, open type designs that convey a very different emotional content.  Some fonts are almost serene – but you would not want to use these in titling an urban-disaster-themed novel, or an auto-mechanics do-it-yourself book, unless you were seeking to insert another emotional element: humor. Humor can also be an effective element.

The most effective covers – some of Elmore Leonard’s covers come to mind – are the ones with a heightened sense of emotion, conflict, or danger.  This can be achieved most effectively with the least number of individual elements.  Sometimes a large title typographic element paired with a small, but significant photographic or illustrative element placed for contrast and conflict will draw the reader’s eye and hold it as they figure out the image’s connection with the rest of the cover.
 
As you can see the choice of typography to convey a desired emotion is very subjective, yet if you “get it” when looking at a font, the chances are that the type designer did their work well, so if it works for you, chances are it will work for your readers, too.

Letter & Line Spacing Issues…

You’ve got your title, pared down to it’s most memorable essence, of course.  You have chosen a color to predominate, based upon how you want your reader affected. Now you have to put the title on the background graphic.  Alignment and legibility are everything. It’s a relationship thing.

Party of the alignment issue is how each letterform relates to its neighbors, above, below and side-by-side.  The spacing between letters and between lines can be adjusted beyond the standard spacing written into the font.  Expanding letterspacing can be very effective if you are working with a condensed font – a narrow style.  Tweaking the inter-letter spacing by opening it up without creating visual “holes” can require finesse, but it can make a hard-to-read title much more legible. Just don’t open it up so much that you see primarily “letters” not the word. 

Another technique on heavy, compact fonts (wider, more ponderous) is to reduce the inter letter spacing, even overlapping letters slightly, especially where round letter forms meet.  It just requires that you finesse the space individually – which might require you to convert the type to curves in your layout/design program, so that individual letters can be moved along the baseline individually.  This letter-by-letter approach is called “kerning” a font, depending upon size, for best legibility and fewest visual holes in a headline, or in text.  Since your title is probably not too long, it won’t be that hard a job to get the best inter-letter spacing you can achieve. Be sure to get back, away from your monitor a few times the process, to check overall legibility and to make sure than you haven’t stacked up the letters to favor one side of the word!

Line spacing, is handled in a similar way, but here, the reverse is true in spacing considerations: the narrower the font, the more interline spacing is required visually, thus keeping the reading "flow" moving left to right, not visually jumping "up and down" with nowhere to go. If you use lower case letters in your title, you’ll have to consider ascenders and descenders in multiple-line titling. Make sure that the portions above and below the baselines don’t interfere with letters on the next line enough to affect their legibility.  You may also have a specific need to jog the letters off their baselines a bit.  This is one way to create a panicked, conflicted feeling in a title graphic. The appearance of kidnappers’ ransom notes, made up of individual letters cut from magazine headlines comes to mind.  If this kind of approach works with the “glue” holding your cover together, then use it, but remember: too much of a good thing is a bad thing – keep it legible.

Next, you’ll apply the same principles to the way your name or pen-name appear on the cover. Unless you have an established brand with your name being the most salient element on the cover, place your name below the title, both physically and in size.  If you need a subhead, or a descriptive tag line consider how adding more typography to the cover might dilute your design, damaging its impact.  Maybe re-thinking the title is a better idea.  If not, at lest make sure that in assigning its position to the cover page, it “belongs” visually” to the title, and you name remains its own focal point. 

Relationship Issues…

In the vector program I use, a nice refinement is the ability to group objects so their interrelationships are locked in place, allowing you to move the object elements as a unit, apart from the background. This allows you to experiment with different locations on the cover for the best results.  You can also use the “duplicate” function to duplicate your titling and authors name and test other type fonts while keeping the relationships constant.  Don’t be afraid to move some of these elements off to the sidelines while you work on each element individually.  When you save the graphic file, chances are you’ll also be saving the empty or not-so-empty space nearby as well, for future tweaking.  Just be sure, when you have finally decided on your design, to delete all of these in the final file.

Vertical alignment is the final key to good cover typography.  If you set up your typography, within your program to “align” left, you’re not finished yet.  In headline sizes, the letter alignments within the font may not be the best possible solution.  This is true also for right alignments as well, but personally, as right alignments lead the eye off the page, I don’t usually consider that for a book cover. You want to hold them for a while. But rules exist to be broken…

One situation where a right-aligned title might be effective would be if, say “speed” is your book’s “glue” – rushing their eyes through the cover might support the content for specific readers, but it wouldn’t work as well, say for a family saga. A centered alignment may be best here, if stability and substance is the idea you wish to communicate.  A centered type design does not usually convey any conflict, unless the type consists of several lines and they are sized differently, or jogged a bit right or left.

The key to vertical alignment whether it’s separate lines of typography or title and authors name, is to find the strengths of the letter forms and connected graphic elements and use them.  What I mean here, is to use them to create a visual unit. Make it easy, or "natural" for the reader’s eye to find the beginning of the next line. The relationships of all the typography must connect visually, to hold the eye better.  On my cover, for example, you’ll notice that the author’s name doesn’t align at the left with the left end of the top of the “T”, but with the T’s ascender.

Left alignment exampleThat’s because in this size, the ascender has the stronger movement, and aligning the stroing ascender at the beginning of my name with the ascender above moves the eye better. When in doubt, experiment.  You shouldn’t see the underlying rule of fives grid as anything more than a suggested framework upon which to work.  Your title typography and other elements may align best off the grid, for a specific effect, or for an intended conflict.  Don’t be afraid to throw out the rules, at least once for every cover, just to see what you can do – even if it ends up just an example of where you don’t want to go.

Next week: We’ll design your Back Cover and bring it all together….

Extra Information: Eye Movement Studies (This won’t be in the test, either!)…

Natural eye movements?  Again, there have been lots of studies of how a reader’s eyes move when scanning a printed page with photographic and graphics elements in combination with headlines and text. These studies have been the basis for many years of the science of ad placement and exploiting the findings improves the effectiveness of ad design as well.  It seems that with few exceptions, peoples’ eyes travel a repeatable and predictable path when viewing a composite page.  The average eye circles a page (your book cover) in two ways.  The primary circle will be clockwise, middle left, up and around, ending at the top right after a full revolution.  The secondary is counter clockwise, starting at the bottom right and circling around to end at the top left.  The primary is the one where the most important information is absorbed, and the secondary is the follow-up for remaining information.  It makes an ad more effective (your book cover) to take advantage of this phenomenon, or at least to manipulate it to your own uses in holding the viewers eye upon the page as long as you can.  Make ‘em comfortable before you sneak up behind them with the book pitch to end all pitches! Shatter their resistance gently and then take their money!

Crafting a Cover: A Do-It-Yourself Sermon in Two or Three Parts…

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We’ve all worked the keyboards till our fingertips are bruised getting our books into shape for readers to actually read and enjoy.  At some point, towards the end of the editing and rewrite drudgery, I need a break.  I’ll assume we all do, and that’s a good point to start thinking about your cover design, if you haven’t already been carrying the whole idea, or components of it around inside you head for months and months.  Putting together a hard hitting cover design will require a whole different set of tools from writing, although you’ll use some of your well-honed writing skills on the cover, you’ll need to put on a new cap – the graphics designer cap…

When I was fresh out of school, the guys who worked the Linotype machines setting hot metal for newspaper type galleys and the pressmen (very few presswomen at the time) wore hats they made by folding last nighty’s sports section, to protect their hair from ink, etc.  and give them a place to stick a couple of extra red pencils and/or grease pencils.

That’s not what I mean.  I mean, it’s time to start thinking about graphics for your book in a new way.  The way a craftsman thinks about an upcoming project: Who is this for? What will it be made of? What will it accomplish? The answers will help organize the tools and materials that will be used in completing the work.  There’s a bit of design philosophy and some scientific touchy-feely stuff, too, but I’ll hold it down. You can skip it if you want, but it will give you a better idea of why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Depending upon your book’s distribution channels, your book’s cover should be designed for:

1. The book seller
2. The book reader
3. The book’s content

Your book cover is packaging for a product you are going to be selling.  The way in which you will be marketing it will have major implications for the effectiveness of the design.  Let’s say, that you intend to use traditional distribution as your primary marketing focus. That means book stores.  The best place to start the design process is to visit a few, if you haven’t had the time lately.  I don’t expect you’ve had a lot of free time on your hands for quite a while, but take some now.

As you pass the front desk, note any Point of Purchase promotion going on, especially book posters and displays.  If you can, without being too obvious, jot down the titles, and the sizes of the books displayed on the counter for later reference. See if any of these are in a similar genre to your book.  Then, go to appropriate sections to your book, and see what’s in the stacks.  Are there books also displayed flat on tables for your genre.  If either a book spine in the stacks, or a cover on a table attract your eye more than others, pick it up, check out how the cover is put together and try to jot down the first three things about the cover that got your attention, including color, besides the title or author(which may be memorable from marketing and promotional exposure).

The point of this exercise is to begin training your eye to “see” book covers as product packaging, and as individual objects composed of several key elements. In good design, these elements are arranged in such a way that they motivate you to hold the book, open the cover and begin reading the book. Some work better than others. You’ll need to learn what these often subjective attributes are.  Whether you have the right terminology to label these attributes doesn’t matter – you will develop your eye to “see” what works – what attracts and hold your attention and what doesn’t.

Pick it up…

If a cover does the right thing, pick up the book and turn it over. Read and file away what about the cover, back blurb, images, Titling, etc. makes you want to open it up. Notice, especially how your eyes move over the cover. Where is your eye led? Does your eye re-visit certain areas of the cover?  There is an entire science of the study of reader eye movement that has been called into action in the graphic design field, especially in advertising and packaging design.  Most people’s eyes move in predictable ways. These ways can be exploited to create more effective design.

If you’re not motivated to open it, file that fact and ask yourself what distracted you or gave you the feeling not to bother to open it up.  These are important points, and will vary from book to book. Remember not all the covers that held your attention will continue to hold it once in hand. Be sure to remember especially the covers that you put down before opening.

You’ll will need to find as many examples of what works once your attention is held, and the book is picked up, as what doesn’t.  You’ll need to “see” a lot of covers and pick up a lot of books before you begin to notice the graphic elements of the designs as separate from the words set in type on them.  Learning to discern the fine point of manipulating graphic elements for best effect takes years, but getting used to seeing those elements in a book cover is something that will begin to take place after only a few visits to a few different book sellers. 

What we’ve learned…

You’ll come to some conclusions about the designs of covers.  You’ll need to be able to see through differences in size, as larger books (trim-size here, not thickness…yet) will attract and hold your eye longer, so sort out primarily any notes regarding similar sizes to your book.  Not all designs are as effective in every size.  There are a few element decisions which will be influenced a great deal by the finished size alone.

Images…

Color alone is a very important element, as is whether the cover is a photographic, illustrative or typographic design.  In my experience, speaking of novels and some non-fiction historic genres, I believe photographic cover designs can hold a reader’s attention longer than the other two types of covers.  It is a true fact in most product advertising design, that whether the ad is set up to feature the product, or a life-style associated “benefit” image; photos (and now, video) work in print and in broadcast media better, in most case that illustration or typographic only advertising.  The other two types, though have very effective uses in specific areas. I’ll deal with those types as well as additional color considerations, next week.

The ascendancy of photography is based in part upon scores of case and focus studies that have shown that it works.  The idea is to get the prospect’s eyes to linger on the cover image long enough to begin to associate familiar experiences, items, etc., from their own lives.  While this is going on, the “magic” takes over. Key graphic elements, ad copy and headlines have a chance to penetrate the often hard, shell of resistance.  If a tiny spark of familiarity and empathy can be kindled, most of the job of selling has been done. 

Bored to tears yet?  Let’s concentrate, right now, upon photographic images. Where can you find them? Should you go through all the shoe boxes of snapshots stored in your closet? Maybe.

Image Resources…

I recommend visiting online providers of stock photo images.  Do keyword searches for images from your book, your intended reader market, even place names and key phrases from your prose. Stock Photo houses, such as Comstock, Veer and Corbis have achieved their high ranking in advertising design circles because of the way their catalogues are organized to provide relevant images.  Each house will have a specialty. For your book, each will probably offer several images that will relate in some way, to creating interest in reading your book. They may show a feeling, a mood, or illustrate a setting, even items used by your Primary Characters. 

Whatever the glue is, stick with it.

If a substance, such as mud, or water is an underlying “glue” throughout your book, then that kind of image may be most appropriate.  Remember, in your cover image choices, you’re not trying to answer all the reader’s mental questions – you’re trying to establish the need to open the book and read it.  A mysterious setting, a dangerous image, all may contribute towards establishing the intended feeling in the viewer, motivating them to pick up your book, turn it over, study the back blurb, then open it up.  Later, they may receive a small, bonus gift in the form of an “Aha” moment as they understand why the image was chosen for the cover!

You may find a handful of appropriate images available from each site, or you may only find a few online across many searches, but the next step will be to consider each of them in turn as potential covers.  Most sites will allow you to download low resolution samples of the images you are interested in for “comping”, which is the term for creating full color mock-ups for presentation.  It can be useful to learn how to use a basic graphics program at this point, or you may have a friend or colleague who can give you assistance in this area.  Oh …also buy a bunch of high-grade glossy inkjet printer paper, as well (you did run out and buy that printer, didn’t you?). 

A short digression, here, if you’ll prop up your eyelids a bit longer. I have been using CorelDraw graphics suite for many years, which is an image/bitmapped studio system for photo bitmapped images (resolution and size dependant) as well as vector graphics (for graphics elements including typography, which will not be resolution and size dependent: scale-able).  There are several other design and photo software suites from Adobe and Quark among others, but initially I purchased CorelDraw because it was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the others and provided the same capabilities as well as hundreds and hundreds of different type fonts. Of course, I soon learned that I really only use a few of these, but at the time, in 1985, it was exciting! I also couldn’t afford a Macintosh at the time, so my software choices were also limited by the PC platform – no longer much of a limit at all.

I usually create a composite cover image in the vector program using these steps:

1. Set up page layout and trim size, adding any folds or scoring (read: spine and back cover) as needed. Cover Templates can come in handy here, also page count, which will determine your spine thickness..
2. Import all the photographic bitmap elements,
3. Resample bitmaps if necessary (changing size and/or resolution),  and adjust contrast and color balance, using the photo-editing accessory. The final touch, if needed will be to apply unsharp masking at a reasonable level (too much gives image components ghost haklos and harsh edge definitions) after all image editing is complete.
4. Convert all bitmaps to CMYK (process printing color) format if proofing for print. Leave it RGB if proofing for online presentation. If RGB, look at the proof on your monitor, not a printed sample.
5. Add typography and other scale-able vector graphics elements in appropriately valued areas with little distracting texture,
6. Tweak until it looks the way you want it, make all elements align along pre-determined invisible lines, then exporting the whole thing to a jpg bitmapped format for reproduction as a proof on my trusty photo printer.

I always make up rough proofs for opinion gathering, using several different images, but always use the same simple typography (at first) to concentrate upon how effective the image alone is.  The book title and authors name are all I use to proof comps.  If there are nice, light areas in the right part of the image, I use darker, related-color type surprinted over the image. If there are nice, dark areas, I knock out the type (white on a dark background, for example).  I use the same type font on all examples, to make the image the most important single element in the overall design. The type weight, size and placement should be chosen to balance and enhance the natural eye movements that take place on a printed page. Composition is an art in itself, but we’ll suffice to say, work it til it’s right, and if it’s not broken, don’t fix it! Noodling a cover is the same as over-editing a book. You can fix it until all the life is gone from it. Now, back to the selection process…
                           
The Money Part…

At this point, you need to have reality intrude a bit.  Stock photos are sold two ways.  First, at a fixed price, Royalty Free, based upon the size of the finished reproduction.  The other way is to pay royalties for each use and published instance of the image, based upon what kind of use, what kind of media and the expected circulation potential.  If you have unlimited funds, this is the way to go, as usually the best (subjective word here) images are managed and sold this way. I’ve found a wealth of material is out there, Royalty Free, and this is probably the way you’ll want to go.

You always need to pay for the use of the cover image or images, unless you own a photograph that is perfect for your cover.  You may have taken it yourself (in which case, you own the photo rights completely, but if it is of another person or recognizable place or landmark, you may need to secure model and/or property release documents for the cover use. Stock photography is almost always fully released when sold. But not always. Be sure.  You will receive a rights receipt, which you should protect carefully when you have decided and paid for an image.  You will also need to understand that you are only apying for the rights you asked for when making your purchase – most stock images are licensed, when sold, for a single use. Be sure to read your licensing/release agreement very thoroughly before you pay up..

But you don’t need to pay for an image before working up several dummy covers using different photos. It’s a very useful step you should take.  Narrow your selection of potential photos down to three or four that you like equally well, and considering the price, subject, clarity and the purely mechanical ideas of tone and texture fields available for type titling and eye movement considerations.  These should be printed in color and show around to people whose opinions are important to your decision. They should all be readers, and they should all read in your genre.  Record all their comments. A bookseller or two would also be a good idea if they have the time to give you.  A nice technique for bookseller presentation involves finding two or three papervback books of the same trim size and page count as yours, then trimming out your proofs and using rubber cement to glue your cover and spine onto the books to show the bookseller. You can even put your books into the stacks this way, to see how they work spine only.  You want your cover to “pop” off the shelf for someone who has not seen it before.

Image Composition, again…

Most stock shots have been professionally composed, and are either basically a portrait (vertically composed) or a landscape (horizontally composed) image.  Here the orientation of your book trim will influence your image decision. Keep in mind, that in some case, it will work nicely to wrap the image around the spine and onto the back cover, especially if it presents lots of areas of minimal texture and either light value or dark value.  Too much texture underlying typography, even titles and headlines,  will distract the reader and create difficulty, so I would try to minimize texture in those areas where type will reside on your design.  Look for the right spots.

These areas are prime real estate for Title type and text, assuming all other considerations fall into place. Images can also be cropped, but bear in mind the final size of the image you’re paying for when thinking of cropping.  Cropping in “tight” and then having to enlarge a lot to fill the trim size is generally risky if the original resolution of the image is 300 dpi or less. It can create resolution issues in final reproduction and even nasty, fuzzy jaggies along the image areas of high contrast and detail. Keep the need for resolution equal to 300 dpi in it’s final form, hopefully achieved without having to enlarge an image or parts of the image.  Reducing to a smaller cropped size does not usually create issues, and is generally a safer way to go, but larger, high resolution images cost more, so you have to balance cost versus application when considering image costs.

One design that can make use of smaller, tighter cropped images, is a layout that makes use of more than one image along with the type on a color or textural background.  Depending upon how appropriate this may be considering the book’s content, and upon the length of the title, this may actually be a potential consideration and savings if smaller images with less resolution can be used successfully.  My only issue with this idea, is that the design aspects of the cover layout will need to be much more refined to pull all the elements together for maximum attention-holding, attracting value, especially in a trade paperback size. A multi-line title can also prove to be much too distracting. This kind of layout also requires a lot of refinement in image alignment and order.  I generally go for the easier path of a great single image, bled all around (no borders) and simple titling.

When designing for smaller sizes, the key is simplicity and readability.  If you have a smaller space to work your magic, it needs to be very arresting.  Use a very simple concept overall, to get the desired results. A larger scale cover gives you more latitude. Oversized books, especially, usually displayed on sellers tables, carry have a lot more space for your “presentation”.  While simplicity is usually the best approach, there might be certain types of books that need to involve the prospect more – a “how to” book for example.  Men – I’m one of those – tend to like to tinker, so appealing to the tinkerer in potential readers is smart design. In this case, additional image “situations” may pose some additional questions. This may lead to the prospect opening the cover up to look for specific answers. But enough theoretic blither…

Let me give you an example of a trade paperback book front cover design.  Below is the front cover of my first novel, The Red Gate:

View 1

It’s a very simple cover, but it has been effective, both flat and on bookstore shelves.  I’ve even had some feedback that the cover was the reason they bought the book!

In the next image, I’ve added a grid I like to work with, superimposed over the image. I call this the Rule of Fives. Catchy name, huh?  I divide a page space into thirds (two lines) vertically and fourths (three lines) horizontally. Five lines in all.  The intersections of these lines correspond, roughly to the places the average readers eye will stop, and are prime locations for informative elements such as title, authors name, and subheading, if one is used.  The choice of five lines is based upon which kind of space divisions most people seem visually comfortable with, given natural eye movements. I’ll cover the source of that design philosophy next week, meanwhile…

The idea is to set up natural alignments of necessary elements in your cover design. Some of the individual elements may also be parts of your photo image.  Look inside the photo.  Considering also the typical eye movements of the reader (clockwise, mid-left, around, then ending top right…). Finessing these into an effective cover is the goal.  Let me illustrate:

View 3

Here, I’ve added the small primary and secondary circles of eye movement to show how elements within the photograph help support the intended eye movement within the natural inclinations. My main focus is to never lead the eye off the side of the page, but to keep it circling and re-circling.  Try to choose well-composed photographic elements that do this – have clear central emphasis and focus – those whose internal elements won’t introduce lines that lead the eye where you don’t want it to go.

In addition, while in the example, the eye is gently guided to rest on the title and author’s name, the subject matter of the image – the wet, craggy Irish coastline – dangerous looking rocks and the arresting sunset coloring all are directly connected to important elements within my book.  The setting is an important Primary Character, influencing much more than movement of the people in the story.  The orange tones, overall display an arresting color, but only a little intimidating, mostly warm and inviting. 

While generally seen as a cheerful color, in this instance, in contrast with the jagged cliffs, it sets up an immediate conflict adding an air of mystery.  Just what I want the viewer to feel. It’s the way I first felt when viewing the image – and since I’m a reader, and have feelings, my opinion has some weight here., and so should yours. The color also relates directly to the title , adding questions which hopefully will guide the person holding the book to turn it over.  I will mention here, that the image was so good for cover use, I decided to carry it over the spine, leaving an arresting color and simple texture: a strong area for titling. It makes for an easy to spot spine in the booksellers’ stacks!  The wrap around image with the abrupt diagonal line formed by the sheer cliffs edge, encourages the reader to turn the book over to see the back, where my pitch awaits. The image was from Corbis, and my out of pocket was under US$100. 

Next week, we’ll continue thinking about color selection and we’ll decide how to pick a type font or face.  I’ll discuss my take on illustrative or typographical cover designs but I’ll minimize the philosophical and touchy-feely stuff in favor of more Nuts and Bolts – I promise. 

The Curmudgeon is also looking forward to your submission of your cover design preliminaries for comment. Email ’em in!

My book site ….. also, my commercial site. Welcome!

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My own book site, filled with the usual suspects: recent press, biographical notes, notes on writing, is up and running (a little creaky right now) for any with an interest.

http://www.rlsuttonbooks.com

Our commercial site, which attempts to actually pay our bills, running aince 1995, is…

http://www.kivatrading.com

 

 

 

Publishing Comparisons (POD vs. POD)

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This post, from Timothy Pontious, originally appeared on his The Pencil Place blog on 5/26/09. In it, he provides a pretty thorough survey of POD publishers.

I had my mouse cursor hovering over the Upload button at lulu.com, but I am truly thankful that I took more time to research the POD / self publishing / vanity publishing horizon before I settled on a publisher for my current project. No, I’ve not settled on that publisher(s) yet.  Thanks for asking.  I was originally leaning toward lulu.com, but all bets are off at the moment. 

There may be several dozen ways to organize this data, so I didn’t. This is a semi-random info dump of what I’ve found so far.  Some entries are lump-able into categories, and others just kind of stand on their own.  

Since I don’t have a legal department, I’ll issue a disclaimer anyway.  This information is all gathered recently across many web sites. For all I know it is already outdated somewhere.  This information is for rough comparisons only. Your mileage will vary.  

Most of these publishers are a mix of paper/digital, so I did not differentiate unless there is something unique in their approach.  

NOTE ->  All places where I report the cost of a copy of a single book for an author, it is either a 5.5" x 8.5" or 6" x 9" paperback trade book – color cover and black text on white paper @250 pages (or similar as described on their page).   I’ve tried to give similar data where it is available, in a similar pattern in the text.  It is extremely difficult to match apples and apples across these many web pages.  

The other cost I list is the minimum cost for your first hundred books, which is the minimum setup fees and book costs with NO additional services selected.  Also no discounts are accounted for, and my math may be fuzzy, but I tried to be consistent. 

Publetariat Editor’s Note: While an estimate of your cost for the first 100 copies is a useful bit of information for making comparisons between publishers, do not assume the companies profiled in this article will actually require you to order a minimum of 100 books. Many POD publishers don’t ask you to buy anything more than a single author copy for review prior to releasing the book for sale. Check with each individual company to verify its minimum order policy.   

Mind your security while you browse these sites. Some of these pages are truly horrific throwbacks to not only Web 1.0, but Windows 98 or something.  They tease with a little information and require you to register so they can send you more data.  I did not bother registering with these sites, assuming they either didn’t know how to spell "Internet", or they were up to something else evil.  Really folks, this is the 21st century. Put your data out where we can find it, or some of us are just not going to play that game and you’re losing authors. Allrighty then?  

I may also have missed some significant publishing vendors.  Let me know and I’ll include them as an update.  So here we go.  

POD and Self Pub (paper/digital) Publishers (in no particular order)

Most of these entries have editorial, layout, book design and marketing packages that can be purchased. Sometimes the packages are bundled.  

iUniverse [http://www.iuniverse.com/] has a separate service for everything.  If you’re the author who needs a lot of services, the kind of traveler who demands room service and excellent concierge service, this is perhaps your publisher.  I would not be surprised if they have services for their services.  Setup fees range $599 – $2099.  Author cost per book (for our example size as stated above) is $11.19.  The minimum cost per the first hundred copies (your promotional stash) is $1718.  Layout, design and editorial services are abundant.  They don’t seem to have much of an author community, but they do have author podcasts going.  They also offer hosted web sites to market your book.  Only books, no other media. 

Lulu [http://www.lulu.com/]  also offers a suite of services for editing, layout, cover design, and etc.  There are no setup fees, but the services can rack up the cost quickly. The author cost for one book is $8.53. The cost per the first 100 is $853.  Lulu also handles CDs, DVDs, audio books, PDF downloads, and some other media as well.  There is an authors forum area, and they brag about their technical support.  For a confident author with an editor friend and a graphics friend, Lulu can be a low cost entry point effectively.  Lulu has storefront pages for your book collection that is a fairly staid template with your customized background image.  

Authorhouse [http://www.authorhouse.com/]  opens their setup fees from $598 to $1298.  The author cost for a book is $9.83. The minimum cost for the first hundred books seems to be $1581.  Authorhouse will grant a free ISBN number, but they didn’t say anything about US Copyright registration.  They also brag on their technical support.  

Scribd [http://www.scribd.com/]  Scribd is the single eBook-only venture I came across (but that is not what I was looking for so that’s appropriate).  You may upload any document to Scribd, and readers can read a sample online for free.  If they purchase that book, they may read it all online, or download and therefore print it.  The author may set any price, and keeps 80% of the revenue.  This is seemingly a streamlined system (I’ve not tried it yet) and the home page is already throwing books at the viewer’s browser, which I like as a marketing approach.  The downside is that the browser must load the iPaper application, which streams the document to the browser, and therefore takes a bit of time to load.  This feature has taken some heat in some forums I was reading through.  Scribd has a fairly complete FAQ area to welcome new authors, so that’s a plus.   

Selfpublishing.com  [http://www.selfpublishing.com/]  This is one of the sites that requires registration, so I didn’t investigate it very thoroughly.  One odd thing is that a hosted ISBN is $99, and an indie ISBN is $125 and the barcode is another $25.  You can buy 10 bar codes in a block from the source on the Internet, plus bar codes, for that amount.  If you have nine more books in you, I’d venture elsewhere.  

CreateSpace [http://www.createspace.com/] This one also requires registration a little sooner than I would have preferred.  The author cost for a book is $3.66 (or less if you upgrade your package). They offer a free hosted ISBN, and an indie ISBN for $35.  They pay royalties as follows:  Retail is list price -20%, and Amazon is list price -40%.    They offer hosted web sites for your book.  One big plus is that they handle multiple media formats (including the only video service I found so far).  CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, so if you publish here the next step for marketing should be a breeze! 

Read the rest of the post on The Pencil Place blog.

From Sandy Nathan & YourShelfLife.com: Award Winning Book Covers: Your Book WILL Be Judged by its Cover. Make It Sing!

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Most of the Indie book contests, like the Benjamin Franklin Awards, IPPYs, Indie Excellence, and all the rest, are closed for the year. The books have been submitted and they’re being judged. Will your book win? Two factors have a very large weight in determining whether you walk away a winner––or get passed up: Your COVER and your TITLE. Today we’re going to talk about book cover design. While it may be late if you’ve got books in competitions this year, you can use what follows for future years.

"It May Be Forever" Cover by Lewis Agrell

[The original of this article is illustrated with beautiful book covers by Lewis Agrell. They don’t up on this site. Please go to  Your Shelf Life.com to see the covers. "It May Be Forever" Cover by Lewis Agrell appears here. I love this cover!]

I’m very pleased to introduce my second guest blogger, Lewis Agrell of The Agrell Group. Lewis and I go back years. He designed promotional materials for my first book, Stepping Off the Edge. I loved what he did and called on him to do the same for Numenon. Lewis designed a one-sheet for Numenon, book marks, and a gorgeous over-sized post card. He also designed the e-book that I’ve been giving out to those who sign up for my email newsletter. And his wife, Kathryn, edited it. What a team!

I think this blog is going to be known as the “get deep into the psychological underpinnings of writing & publication” blog. Irene Watson of Reader Views introduced us to Jungian personality type. I added a bit, and now Lewis is going to introduce concepts that I learned originally in graduate school in counseling.

Knowing these concepts is very important: They’re operating in your buyers’ minds and souls (and yours) whether you know it or not. Better to know it. But don’t worry! Lewis Agrell makes them user friendly!

Lewis has been kind enough to let me illustrate the blog post with some of his covers. And now, here’s Lewis Agrell on book cover design:

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BOOK COVER DESIGN?

In my estimation, the best covers are the ones that are the most beautiful. Billions of dollars are spent every year in advertising, fashion and manufacturing to infuse more and more beauty. Why? Because beauty attracts the eye. That’s why the most beautiful models, actresses, cars, houses and boats cost the most  money. Beauty is a precious, treasured commodity. Beauty has specific qualities. These qualities are harmony, balance, unity, synthesis, and refinement. Designers struggle to make the colors and design elements (fonts, photos, illustrations, and other graphic elements) work in such a way that the greatest beauty is attained.

 

KILLROD The Cross of Lorraine Murders. Cover by Lewis Agrell. Simple, elegant design employing archetypes––the cross and circle, which also looks like a moon.

[Cover shown on YourShelfLife.com: KILLROD The Cross of Lorraine Murders. Cover by Lewis Agrell. Simple, elegant, & beautiful design employing archetypes––the cross and circle, which also looks like a moon. Love this, too.] 

Attributes of the Designer

Why are some designers better than others? This is not a simple question to answer. Designers must be trained in the basics of graphic design, particularly color theory. The other qualities that are necessary are:

  1. Experience (it helps to have tried many different approaches to design work, and learned what does, and does not, work)
  2. Intelligence—reading as much as possible about the industry is very helpful, because it is important to stay current, not only with the latest design movements and techniques, but also the tools of the trade (computers and software).
  3. Worldly awareness: it helps to know what is going on in the world, because world events are often reflected in design work. Witness particularly the dynamics of the sixties and the seventies, when many social shifts occurred. Designers and illustrators exploded with new ways of working, as a reflection of the dynamism of the period.
  4. Sensitivity. A designer must be sensitive to the material with which he/she is working, as well as to the needs, desires, and expectations of the client.

“As he thinketh…so is he”

An individual’s consciousness can vary tremendously. Wherever a person places the bulk of his attention will indicate the level of awareness. People are generally focused either physically, emotionally, or mentally. It is best for a designer to have as high an awareness level as possible.

Why is this critical?  Because a designer, or any creative person, cannot create beyond his or her level of awareness. When a high level of awareness is attained, that individual also has a connection to the lower levels, having passed through them, at some point in his or her maturation.

For example, a designer who is entirely focused on the physical realm, would not do well with a project focused on matters of the heart. A designer who is swept up in the world of emotions, would not do well with a project that has deep philosophical leanings.

In the mental realm, there are three areas of focus:

  • The lowest is the subconscious. Designers focused on this level create work that is very dark and mysterious—perhaps even very ugly and horrifying—and certainly distorted and misshapen. The primary color in their palette is black.
  • The next mental level is that of the concrete mind. This is the realm of logic and reasoning. This is the area of scientists and mathematicians. The design solution from an artist focused on this level will be very balanced and harmonious. The Golden Ratio, or Divine Proportion (approximately 1.618) might be very important for a designer on this level of consciousness. Someone who has a mental focus labors very carefully to determine a proper approach, utilizing logic, reasoning and analysis.
  • The highest level is known as the superconscious. In this level, symbolism is very important to the designer. Also, the designer will use a palette of very bright, cheerful, and uplifting colors. The keys to identifying designers who work on this level are a) their work reflects a wide variety of creativity or understanding; and b) they generally “know” immediately what the best solution will be for various projects. The “Eureka!” moment is very common for these designers. They will usually have a vivid mental image in mind before a person finishes explaining a concept to them. They think very quickly.

Many designers specialize in one particular area. This is because they have a strong physical, emotional, or mental strength, and design in that area.

 

clean, catchy, powerful. Does the job!

[Cover shown on YourShelfLife.com: "The Money Belt" This is not a "grunge" cover. Great for mass market book. I love this cover: clean, catchy, powerful. Does the job!]

The “grunge” look

If beauty is so important, why is there a “grunge” movement? The reason for this may be a temporary backlash to the “perfection” that can be created by computers. A world saturated with the unwavering perfection that computers are capable of creating can become a bit maddening to designers who like to put a more human touch to their work, so designers are fighting against the coldness of computers with “grungy” designs—those that appear as though they are not created from the computer, even thought the computer remains an indispensable tool for production.

This will become overused and will be rejected in time, in the same way that the psychedelic look passed away at some point in the early seventies. Great beauty will always be the sine qua non for designers. Deviations from beauty are only a temporary stylistic meandering. For example, ugliness will never gain a foothold in auto manufacturing because of the importance of high volume sales. When one particular car was created that people thought was not beautiful (the Edsel, 1958), the car sales were dismal. Car manufacturers don’t want a repeat of that noted failure.

What catches the eye besides beauty? Newness and uniqueness. An example of this is reflected in the story of the designer who needed to create a new cereal box to be displayed in grocery stores. He saw that all of the boxes had bright, vibrant colors. So, what did he chose to do? He created a cereal box that was mostly white. This “non-color” stood out from the rest of the boxes on the shelves, gaining that valuable eye-catching quality.

 

"Mediterranean Madness" Cover by Lewis Agrell. In a genre cover, the designer must give readers what they expect. Wow, and good design.

[Cover shown on YourShelfLife.com: "Mediterranean Madness" Cover by Lewis Agrell. In a genre cover, the designer must give readers what they expect. Wow, and good design.] 

Genre design

There are genres of books that have a “standard look,” that the buyer expects to see, for example, romance novels. All purchasers of romance novels want to see an image of a very strong, handsome, romantic yet masculine man embracing a beautiful woman on the cover of the book. To deviate from this “formula” is to risk loss of sales.

The same is true with fantasy novels. The buyers want to see a careful rendering of a dragon, or some such fanciful creature. Wouldn’t it be odd to see a biography without a painting or photo of the person about whom the book was written? The challenge for the designer, when dealing with these genres, is not a simple one. He/she must create something similar, yet unique and powerful.

How to pick a designer for your book

The easiest way is to examine the designer’s website and see if there is a style that is similar to what you imagine for your book. If you like what the designer has done, but don’t see something that you are looking for, simply send an email to the designer and ask if he/she has done anything similar to what you have in mind. Very often, the designer will have work that is not on the website.

If you still have doubts about the artist’s ability to create what you want, you can always hire the artist to do a concept sketch. If you are less than happy with the concept sketch, you can then either ask for another sketch, listing your desires, or you can thank the designer for his work (be sure to send a check for the hard work!) and then move on to another designer.

Designing your own cover

Don’t do it. That’s my answer to all writers who want to design their own cover. You have put a lot of energy into your book. You want the cover to reflect as much energy and power as your carefully groomed text. The person who can provide that energy and power is someone who is trained in graphic design.

Graphic designers have spent years, or decades, perfecting their art.Keep in mind that they spend eight hours a day, five days (or more) a week, twelve months a year, year in and year out, working to perfect their craft. They have tried and failed, so they know what doesn’t work. They have succeeded, and their work has been tested in the marketplace.

Simply put, they know what they are doing.

You wouldn’t rewire own your house yourself; you’d hire a professional electrician. The same goes for book cover design: Hire a professional. Sure, it can be expensive, but the extra “oomph” that you get in the professional design may translate into an increase in the number of books sold, simply because people are attracted to and impressed with the cover design! To sell the most books, save your pennies and hire the best graphic designer that you can afford. You’ll be grateful that you did when you see the results.

Please, don’t take my word for it. Talk to authors who have used professional designers to create their covers. You might be surprised by what they say.

 

"No Sisters Sisters Club", an engaging cover for a Young Adult book.

[Cover shown on YourShelfLife.com:  "No Sisters Sisters Club", an engaging cover for a Young Adult book.]

Lewis Agrell has been an award-winning professional designer and illustrator for thirty years. He worked as the Chief Artist for the New York Times Company at its largest regional newspaper for ten years. He and his wife, Kathryn (a writer/editor) are the principal owners of The Agrell Group, a graphic design/creative writing firm, located in Prescott, Arizona. To contact them: Lagrell@commspeed.net or Kagrell@commspeed.net   Phone: 928.445.7038.

From Sandy Nathan: It’s been a privilege to share Lewis’s thoughts and words with you. Here’s a surprise. You may think that book covers of this quality must be very expensive. Not so. Lewis’s covers––front, back, spine––usually run between $500 and $1,200. You may want to consider him for your next book.

[This article comes from  is from YourShelfLife.com. Your Shelf LIfe is about increasing the shelf life of your book––and you. It’s dedicated to sanity and success for authors. This article on book covers is illustrated with gorgeous covers by Lewis Agrell. They aren’t showing up on this site. Please go to  Your Shelf Life.com to see the covers.]

 

Win Book Contests – Make Your Book a Winner!

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Most of the 2009 book contests are closed. The books are and supporting materials are in. The judging is on. The contestants hyperventilate as the countdown continues. Will they be finalists? Actually win?

A nice thing about book contests is that you are an award winner even if you’re “just” a finalist. In the same way that Academy Award nominees get to say, “Academy Award nominee Snelda Grottie” forever, you can say Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist. Being a finalist counts as an award!

I’ve got my book, Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money, in five contests. I’m about to freak out. Should I have entered it in different categories than the ones I entered? Where’s the receipt from that very prestigious competition I took a chance on? I did enter it, didn’t I?

The anxiety will continue for the contestants until the finalists are notified. And longer, until the winner is announced––often at Book Expo America, the largest  book publishing event in North America. This year, BEA is May 28 to 31 in NYC.

It’s a little late for an article about setting your book up to win in 2009 book contests, but I’ve got to do something to fill the time.

I’M SANDY NATHAN. So far, I’ve won eight national awards for my two books. I’ll post a list of my wins at the end of this article.

Less well known is the fact that I also have experience as a book contest judge. My writerly credentials, contest wins, and the fact that I graded papers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for 18 spring quarters make me an ideal candidate for judging.

I love it, truly. Brings back memories. I used to work for a top rated Stanford professor along with a jaded team of other smart people. Every year, he gave each of us a FOUR FOOT TALL stack of academic papers to grade OVER THE WEEKEND. Brutal.

I got really good at separating fluff from substance. Fast.  The books presented to me to judge remind me of those wonderful days of the nonstop pursuit of achievement, which I have not left behind.

HOW CAN YOU WIN A BOOK CONTEST?

If you win a book contest, chances are you already know how to win it. Here’s a story: When the Publisher’s Marketing Association (now the Independent Book Publishers’ Association) notified me that my book, Stepping Off the Edge, was a finalist in the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Awards in the New Age/Spirituality category, I boo-hooed. They choose only 3 finalists per category nationwide, one of which would be the winner. This was the first contest I’d entered. My first book.

“Oh, I can’t believe it. I’m so excited. Oh, my God. I’m so grateful. One out of three finalists! I can’t believe it. This is so wonderful!” I walked around our ranch emoting tearfully. Then something happened.

The overarching category of my writing is spiritually––which is based on spiritual or religious experience. That’s because I have spiritual experiences and have had them all my life. In the cacophony of my inner dialogue, one voice stands out. It’s calm, clear, unaffected, and never wrong. I think of it as God. This voice spoke:

“What’s the big deal, Sandy? You’ve been a straight A student most of your life. Why shouldn’t you win? You know what went into that book.” There was a pause and more communication. “Don’t you trust Me to reward you? To notice that you’ve done a good job? Don’t you think I care about you?”

Oops. My tearful gratitude had the smell of a contestant on a TV quiz show flipping out over winning a new refrigerator. It was an unnecessary display of ego and self importance, which also pointed to my lack of faith.

So let’s leave that behind and talk about how to win.

The key is: If you win a book contest, you already know how to set up a winner. It’s a job of work, like mucking out stalls at our ranch.

Just like winning a horse show class.  You win the instant you ride into the arena on a winning horse. Similarly, you win in a book contest the instant the judge looks at the array of books he or she has to judge. Your book has to leap out of the stack of ho-hum contenders and SING. Also tap dance.

HOW DO YOU DO THIS? WITH YOUR BOOK!

1.  HARDBACKS SHOW UP BETTER. You’re a judge.  Thirty or forty books are sitting on a table. You won’t read all of them. You see well-designed hardback with a killer cover. Your eyes and hands gravitate to it. Wow. It’s beautiful. Paper even feels classy. You put the book in the “keeper” pile. Hardbacks have more weight in competition.

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money. Your cover should hook the viewers’ archetypes: The symbol in the middle of my cover is based on the photo of a Shiva Nataraj I own. Not only is the circle an archetype of wholeness, Shiva is revered all over the world. Including by me. Note the high contrast and predominately black cover. This design will dominate pretty near anything.

2. YOUR TITLE AND COVER will make you win or sink you. Do you know how to judge a cover? Lewis Agrell of The Agrell Group, will be a guest blogger with his terrific article on what makes a winning book cover. I’ll post it soon.

For now, let’s rely on phone book ads. Open the yellow page ads in any phone book. Scan the page quickly. Where do your eyes land? Note the ad. Do it again on another page, and another.

In all probability, the ad that draws your attention is SIMPLE. UNCLUTTERED. EITHER BLACK, WHITE, OR MOSTLY EMPTY. The ads that grab your eyeballs and hold them have attained PAGE  DOMINANCE. People hire consultants to create dominant ads for them.

Now go to a book store sale table and look at the books. Which books grab your eyes? Which do you pick up? Buy? A book contest is like that table. Clear, bold, design that dominates the competition will win.

YOUR COVER MUST HAVE AN EMOTIONAL HOOK. THINK ARCHETYPES. Primal images. Something that grabs the inner psychology of your reader/judge.

To win and much more importantly, to be purchased, your book cover AND SPINE must dominate any table and any bookshelf.

3. YOUR TITLE IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT. First off, your title embodies your book’s essence. It is the first word or words the reader sees. It should be engaging, easy to read, evocative, and compelling––it should set the emotional tone for your book. As should the SUBTITLE or TAG LINE (THE ONE LINE DESCRIPTION BELOW THE TITLE.) Also, most of the big catalogs of books will list your book by its TITLE ONLY. Better be memorable. Like Twilight.

4. THE WORDS ON YOUR COVER, FLAPS, AND FIRST FEW PAGES OF YOUR BOOK, YOUR BOOK’S COPY, SHOULD BE UNFORGETTABLE. These words are your prime real estate and are what will make your book succeed. The book contest judge, book store owner, and your buyer will make a decision about your book based on these words––in seconds. You want emotional hooks, ease of reading, and enchantment in these places.

Writing copy is a skill. You can write text like an angel and not be able to pump out a winning tag line. I’ve got an Emmy-nominated screenwriter Laren Bright, the best copy writer I know, preparing an article for this blog. He’ll tell you how to do it.

I say: Hire it done if you can possibly afford it. Copy writing is like writing poetry: You need to be able to produce succinct messages packed with meaning and emotional associations in a tight space.

5. BOOK DESIGN, INTERIOR & EXTERIOR: YOUR BOOK SHOULD LOOK LIKE RANDOM HOUSE PRODUCED IT. NO LESS. We’ve talked about the cover, title, and copy. Every page and every word should be as well designed as your cover. Go to a book store and look at best selling books. Get a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and memorize the order of pages in a book.

A very important thing to note: NEVER HAVE YOUR TITLE PAGE ON THE LEFT. DO NOT DO THAT. Do your homework. Know the proper order of pages in a book. Know what a half title page is and where it goes. The contest judge will know all about this.

6. SELF PUBLISHING, SMALL PRESSES, THE MAJORS: Some contests are specifically for self published books, by that I mean books put out by the big POD printers like lulu.com, iUniverse, Outskirts Press, BookSurge and the rest. If this is your competition, let your lulu imprint show.

If you’re in open competition, hide it. Some people have real prejudices against self-published books. There’s not as much of a prejudice against author-owned small presses––after all, Benjamin Franklin did it. So did Mark Twain, DH Lawrence and tons of big literary names. If you own and operate a small press, that puts you in a different category, even if your book was printed by CreateSpace or Outskirts Press. Just make sure that nothing about the mass producers shows.

If you take this approach, create a killer logo and press name, and have the book professionally designed and produced, you’ll be in good shape to compete in contests.

I have no prejudice against self-published books. I have a real bone to pick with poorly produced self-published books whose authors don’t respect me––the buying customer and reader––enough to get the thing professionally edited and proofed before offering it for sale. Or stick it in my face and expect me to judge it.

DO NOT PUT YOUR BOOK UP FOR SALE UNTIL IT IS TOP QUALITY IN EVERY WAY. YOU ARE CHEATING YOUR READERS WHEN YOU OFFER SLOPPY WORK.

7. PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTION: The book contest judge may not have time to read all of your book, but he or she will sure sample pages and text. Typos, lousy interior and exterior design, cheap paper, all of it pops out. Hire an editor, copy editor and proofreader. Hire a book designer. Believe it or not, they’re not all super expensive. Look at my blog roll. Some great professionals are listed there.

TEMPLATES: Many of the big POD publishers offer templates for book interiors. These don’t show up well in contests. The text is set too tight, and the margins too small. There’s not enough variety in the overall design. In contests, judges see many books with very similar, standard interiors. If your book is one of thirty in a category, or one of THREE HUNDRED, it has to stand out. Templates won’t do it.

8. PERIPHERALS: YOUR WEB SITE, STATIONERY, & PRESS KIT. You did include those with your entry, didn’t you? I assure you, the winners did. The book contest judges are very likely to check your website, especially if you make it through enough of the hoops to stay in “the good pile” to the end. The “ad-ons” are breakers.

Two books might be ranked about the same, but if one author has an amazing web site and hosts a blog with a bazillion visitors a day providing a vital services to the world––who do you think will win? Ditto if on author provides copies of his book’s terrific reviews, testimonials, and advertising materials in a lovely custom folder. Which book will win?

Oh, yeah. What about the VIDEO FOR YOUR BOOK? Is that linked prominently on your site? Mentioned in your press kit?

9. THE BOOK, AS IN––WHAT’S BETWEEN THE COVERS? In your writing group, you concentrate on the writers’ skills and arts. Word by word, you construct and deconstruct and reconstruct your masterpiece. Ditto working with your editor. Your write, rewrite, have it slashed and burned, and make it rise again. You struggle to express exactly what you want, worry about pacing and plot and characters.

I was in two writing groups for a total of eleven years. I’ve worked with maybe six or seven good, tough editors. The content of your book matters, especially if you want it to sell. If you want word of mouth to propel it. If you want to read it yourself in future years and not be embarrassed by it.

The contest judge or panel of judges isn’t going to read all of your book. They’ll sample it and look at different aspects of it.

Does that mean you can skip the 11 years of writing groups and all those creative writing classes? No. Whatever random page a judge’s eyes fall upon will produce an impression. All the pages have to be good, since you don’t know which one will be read. Know what terms relating to race, ethnicity, or sexual preference are OK to use in modern literary and cultural circles. Get it right.

The curious thing is: Most people writing in academic settings concentrate solely on the quality of their manuscripts. They don’t look at any of the other points noted here, any of which can destroy their chances of winning a book contest or selling. That’s because in the major creative writing and MFA programs, people assume that they will be published by the major publishers.

They haven’t had direct experience of the realities of the publishing industry. Such students often have no idea that to succeed, they may have to set up a small press and learn to do things they never were taught in school. Academic programs may not talk about the recession and cut-backs and literary agents being laid off, either.

The real world can be a big surprise, even if you got your MFA from Iowa.

Producing a book that wins contests is a big job requiring a commitment of time and money. It doesn’t have to be a HUGE commitment of money, but its going to cost something. Before you enter a contest, you should know what you’re up against.

What do you win at the end of the day?
Some of the awards won by Rancho Vilasa. A few of these are my wins. The real victory that comes from athletic competition is a winning of soul, which is transferable to other endeavors. If you can show a horse and win, you can do anything.

To win in a horse show, you need a horse that grabs the judge’s eye the instant he enters the arena. He needs the stamina to look good at the end of a grueling class. For book contest, you need a book that’s set up to win from one end of the judging process to the other. And then into the marketing arena.

That’s it, folks! Happy competing!

Sandy Nathan, award winning author of Numenon & Stepping Off the Edge. I’m a bit burnt out writing about winning. Here are some links to what I’ve won in book contests:

You win the minute you walk into the arena.

With horses, you win the minute you walk into the arena. This is a Matched Pairs Class at the La Bahia Peruvian Horse Show in Watsonville, CA. My husband and I are riding horses that are full brothers––same mom & pop. Except for the extra chrome (white markings) on Azteca, these horses pass for identical. The judge told us after the class, "You won that class the minute you walked into the arena." Your book will win or lose the same way.

Book Covers: Tips and Resources

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 Cover design is an incredibly important part of the publishing process. If you are published by a publishing house, you probably won’t have much say in the matter. But for self-published and indie authors, this is a key topic.

You want people to pick your book out from the others in the store, or from the website. Here are some tips and resources you can use to stand out. 

 

Get some inspiration

·         Book cover examples : lots of book covers to give you ideas for yours . Some are terrible covers but probably sell a lot of books (Warren Buffett), some are brilliant and eye-catching (Leather Maiden), and others go for plain and simple (Secret of Scent).

·         The Book Design Review Blog – examples and commentary on book covers

·         Archive of book cover designs and designers – over 1000 covers to view

·         Cover as brand – how Penguin uses the classics look. Also, think “For Dummies” range and other book brands where the cover distinguishes the content.

 

 

Top Tips for book covers:

·         Remember you are selling on the internet (as well as bookstores). Your cover needs to be clear and legible even at Thumbnail size. Make it clear and eye-catching. Always include your website somewhere on the cover.
 

·         Spine Tips: Keep plain colours near the spine. I learnt this the hard way by having multicolours which bled onto the spine on some print runs. I will keep plain colours as background in the future to avoid this. If you are making your own files for upload to a Print-on-Demand site, use a spine calculator to check the width.

·         The back cover is sales copy. It should include headline and blurb text. Make it like a sales letter so they want to read inside.  The headline should be in different size font so it stands out.

 

·         Don’t print the RRP (Recommended Retail Price) on the back of the book. If you are selling overseas then it will be in the wrong currency and you will sell it for different prices to different people anyway. Bookstores will price it if they take it and you can sell it for whatever you want.

 

 

Make your own cover – here are some helpful sites:

 

·         Dan Poynter (guru of self-publishing) has a fill in the blanks Book Cover worksheet.He also has a short document for sale which has some interesting points.
 

·         Interactive book cover creator – quite a cool gadget
 

·         Publishing learning centre at Cafe Press – lots of great technical information about how to design one yourself.
 

·         Buy images online at a number of sites. If you find an image online that is not for sale, then approach the photographer or site for permission to use. www.iStockPhoto.com has millions of images. I use this site for book cover images as well as for my websites.
 

If it’s all too hard, get it designed for you – here are some of the sites I found online (although I have not used myself).


·         Book Cover Express – email for price list

·         Book Cover Designer – various options from ebooks to hardcover, can also do type-setting

·         Book Cover Pro – some very nice covers on here. You can buy their software, use their templates or they will do a custom cover based on a template for US$275

·         Killer Covers  – for ebook covers that look good as thumbnails – for $117

·         Get a professional designer from Elance – post your project and get bids from professionals 
 

(First posted at The Creative Penn)  

Getting started in self-publishing: a few frequently asked questions

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While I’m new to the idea of independent self-publishing in this industry, I’ve done quite a bit of work in the indie roleplaying game industry as an editor and working with folk like the Indie Press Revolution (a bit like lulu.com for game designers).  The market’s quite a bit smaller, but unlike traditional publishing, ‘indie’ in that context actually carries a more positive cannotation — and they’ve been doing it very successfully for a decade or more.

 

In poking around and doing my research on this new (to me) industry, I’ve found that a lot of the questions that newcomers to the indie game publishing industry have about publishing and marketing their own work are similar to the sorts of questions that a newcomer to fiction/nonfiction self-publishing might have.

 

I’ve gone to some work to compile answers to some of the more frequently asked questions that a newcomer might have about how to "do this thing" — the resulting post is pretty long, but hopefully helpful to… well, someone.

 

Enjoy or ignore at your leisure, and if someone with specific experience in self-publishing as it pertains to fiction/nonfiction finds some of these compiled answers inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, PLEASE FEEL FREE to add a post with your own expertise and input.

 

Finally, please don’t take too much offense with me for the opinions expressed in the answers below.  These answers are not ‘mine’ in any sense, other than the fact that I collected them from various people, as they provided answers.  Come to that, the questions aren’t mine, either.   I’m just providing some information that I think is valuable — and maybe starting a conversation or two.

 

Printing Books with traditional methods

 

1. I’ve heard there’s certain "price breaks" for printing books. (ie. printing 500 is cheaper, per book, than printing 5) Typically, where are the major price breaks?  When people have a print run done, how many do they normally have printed?

As a rule of thumb there really aren’t actual price breaks in the technology itself. It’s just that setting up the print run costs X dollars, paper costs Y dollars and printing that one page costs Z dollars. In a traditional set-up (off-set or the sort) X is high, Y is the same it is for everybody else and Z is minuscule. In a digital printing set-up X is low, Y is the same and Z is high. This means that if you plot the costs of printing a project into a graph with run length on the x-axis and cost on the y-axis, you’ll find that the traditional method starts higher (that set-up cost X is the same even if you print just one copy) but goes up slower (Z is very low, mostly it’s Y that increases the cost as your paper consumption increases), while the digital printer starts lower (X is smaller, and can be brought down further by smart preparation; some printers go so far as to include the set-up costs in the page costs, such as Lulu, which results in almost no price breaks with longer runs) and goes up faster (because Z is considerable, unlike in the traditional set-up).

 

"Price breaks" in this technical context are an artificial phenomenon that comes about with individual printers who simplify their costs structure for the customer. Lulu, for example, gives you a very slight discount for printing what, 25 copies of your book? It’s not that 25 is somehow cheaper to make than 24, they just decided to set up their pricing like this. Other printers have different systems, different work flow, different practices, different profit margins, different customers and different pricing.

 

The natural follow-up question is when a traditional print run should be chosen instead of a digital printer. The answer changes with time as both basic types of printing equipment is developed, and the state of the economy changes to favour different companies. But a very, very rough rule of thumb might be that the break-point between the two technologies might reside somewhere around 500 copies of whatever you’re printing. At those numbers you should definitely start including chosen traditional printers into your quote requests, while considerably under that it’s unlikely that they could match the prices of digital printers.

 

When putting that to practice the indie designer will find that he will do well to be very critical of the purported advantages of large print runs. The question of how much to print depends on your personal goals so much that we can’t go into it here, though.

2. How much, per book, does it cost?  How much more do color books cost?  How much more do hardcover books cost?

 

If you’re printing just one copy of your book (POD) and it’s a typical book, expect it to cost something like 5-10 dollars depending on its size. Quadruple or quintuple that for full color, roughly. Add something like 5 dollars for hard covers or otherwise special binding. When printing in quantity, these prices go down considerably. When printing a couple of hundred copies of your book with a digital printer, expect to pay considerably under five dollars per copy if it’s one-color and perfect bound. When printing the same book in the thousands, expect the cost to be even lower.

 

The costs savings you get for a larger print run have diminishing returns because the "savings" we see in per-copy cost are really that set-up factor X distributed to more copies of the book, and you can’t really spread it out forever – at some point you’re just looking at the real variable costs of producing the book when you’re doing such a large print run that the X factor fades into irrelevancy in the cost structure. If setting up the printer costs $500 and printing one book costs $1, then we’re going to say that printing that one book costs $501 even when in reality you just paid for setting up the printer for the most part. If you printed a hundred copies at once from that printer, you’d get a per-copy cost of $6, out of which $5 is set-up cost. If you printed a thousand copies, your cost per copy would be $1.5, out of which $.5 would be set-up cost and the majority would in fact come as variable costs. This is why the cost of one book goes down when you print larger runs – but you can never get below those variable costs.

3. What’s the process of, finding a printer, negotiating a print run and arranging delivery, like?

The normal method for finding a printer for your work is to go comb the internet for the sort of printer you want – POD, digital, traditional – write down their contact information and then send a bunch of email with the heading "Quote Request" or similar. In this email message you then describe your project in terms of printing practice – ideally you’ll already know what information to give, but presumably the printer will help you by asking clarifying questions if they want your business. You send many of these messages, at least a dozen, and then compare the responses, perhaps by setting up a table out of them. This allows you to cross out the companies that are asking highly inflated prices compared to the competition, as well as those that gave suspiciously low quotes. Out of the rest you then pick the printer that gave a reasonably low quote and seems professional, responsive and trustworthy.

 

You can make the above process a bit easier by using a printer mailing list to send you quote. The Internet is full of mailing list services where printers list themselves and where you can go and give your project details – they’ll automatically mail the data to hundreds of printers, out of which the ones who think they can service your needs will send you their quotes

 

Another thing that might help you are the quote request forms many printers have on their web pages. These are useful if you don’t know much about printing and therefore don’t know what your request should include. I don’t use forms myself because they limit the sort of information I can give, and it’s slow to type out the same information in the slightly different forms of many different printers when I could just be mass-sending one email message to many different printers. But if you know that you won’t be asking for quotes from many places, then using the form might be a time-saver.

 

To do this printer-finding correctly you’ll need to know the sort of printers you’re interested in technology-wise and otherwise as well: you know how many copies of the book you want, so based on that you’ll choose either POD, digital print or traditional printers in your search, or perhaps two of the categories if your project might work with either. (The difference between the first two is that a POD printer is specialized in printing just one copy of the book at a time and also provides a fulfillment service, while a digital printer just does small print runs in the dozens or low hundreds using digital printing equipment – the equipment is often very similar in these companies, their business models just differ.) You might also have recommendations or warnings from other publishers with similar needs, which might help you specifically target some printers with your quote requests. Most of the time the printer websites won’t give you any solid data about whether they can or can’t print or bind the work you want, so in general you’ll have to just send them your quote request (a form letter, essentially – no need to personalize it) and see what they think themselves. The printer is the foremost authority on what they can or can’t do for you.

 

When you get responses, you’ll get to see why the general opinion of online printers is somewhat low. Many printers won’t answer you at all because they lost your mail or are not interested in the project – those are fine, you won’t be missing them. Some printers will send you quotes that are very high; this might be because their set-up is simply inefficient for the sort of project you’re proposing, or it might be because their "expertise" lies in doing over-priced print jobs for amateurs who don’t realize that they should ask around before committing to a printer.

 

Some printers will ask you bad questions, some will act like you made a binding contract with them just by asking for their prices, some will contact you a half year after you sent the request, some will be obviously incompetent, and so on – it’s a jungle out there and your job is to find a printer that actually can do the work for you. I recommend that you favour printers with intelligible, prompt customer service highly, even over a slightly cheaper alternative. It’ll be invaluable during the printing process if you have chosen a printer that actually reads emails and answers questions. A traditional warning sign is if you write a message with several questions and they only answer the first one.

 

Digital printers especially have very widely varying conceptions of quality and professionalism. You might find that after you’ve chosen a printer, you will return to the quotes in a couple of weeks after it’s become obvious that the printer you chose either can’t stick to the schedule they promised or can’t print the quality of work you require. Always demand a proof on paper from a printer you’re working with for the first time! It’s literally possible that a printer can’t print your work because they don’t know how to change the raster setting of their machine to print acceptable greyscale images, for example.

 

You will find very, very few POD operations still around that will do the work on credit. The ones that did before have all gone out of business.

 

With a traditional printer, working on a half down, half net 30, the half down largely covers a printers up front investment. If they never saw the other net 30, they would be close to break even on the project, less their profit margin and maybe taking a hit on some of the labor. And if an account goes past due, you are usually talking about an amount large enough to go after, legally, in some fashion.

 

With print on demand, the amounts we talking about are typically in the hundreds and for many smaller orders, under $100. When an account as such goes unpaid, its such a small amount it doesn’t make any sense to chase after it legally, as the cost to get that recovery outstrips the amount to be recovered. And if the POD took nothing up front, they are out not just the labor, but the cost of the paper, printing and shipping too. This is the quick road to business failure for a POD.

 

One thing a POD (or any digital printer) should be able to offer is a proof or a small enough order that it can serve as a proof. If you are unsure about the quality of a POD, leave yourself time to do a small test order first, so you can see what you are getting before committing to a somewhat larger order.

 

As for delivery, the normal procedure is for you to include the rough target area of the delivery in your initial quote request. Then the printers (or at least the marginally competent fraction therein) know to include the costs of their chosen courier into their quote.

How much space does 1,000 books take up?

Space requirements will very much depend on the size of the book. For 2000 copies of a 100 page digest book, the whole print run would come in about 16 boxes, each about the size of a 5,000 sheet case of copy paper. Space wise, that could all be stored packing boxes under and on top of a decent sized office desk, though stacked 3-4 boxes high.

 

Now, by comparison, a similarl sized "case" of a few of larger hard covers have about 20-25 books in them. These would be 200-300 page 8.5" x 11" soft or hard cover books. So a print run of 1000 of those, at 25 per case, would take up about 40-50 cases. This is still very much able to be fit into 1 stall of a two car garage.

 

Honestly, if you were to invest in some heavy duty, multi shelf wooden shelving that would let you partition your 1 car stall into multiple storage slots (recommended that the lowest shelf be at least 6" off the cement floor to avoid small floods or even just moisture from the cement transfering to the boxes and books), my bet is that you would have storage room for up to 6 to 8 such print runs, especially assuming a sell down in on hand inventory on the previous ones printed over time.

Now, that said, a 1,000 print run in todays environment is some long, hard work to sell. Doable, but not easy. You might be better served starting a bit smaller. Its always tempting to print larger to get a better per book price, however, an important accounting principle that MANY new indie writer/publishers fail to grasp is that you ony get the write off the cost of a product once it is sold and you only get to write off its "cost of goods sold". The important part there is cost of goods "SOLD". Example.

 

You print 500 books at $4.00 per book. Cost $2,000 to print. You sell all 500 books, so your cost per book "sold" works out to be the same $4.00 per book you paid to have printed.

 

Or you print 1,000 books at $3.00 a book. Cost you $3,000 to print. You sell 650 of them. In this case, your cost of goods sold is NOT $3.00, its that $3,000 you spent on printing divided by the 650 units you sold. Basically $4.62 per book sold.

 

So, printing "more" to chase after the better price per book is not necessarily actually cheaper. Depends on how many you can ultimately sell. The difference between those two scenarios also has tax implications and the second scenario will end up costing you more still.

5. Should you have a distributor handle receiving and storing the books, or self distribute?

 

A distributor wouldn’t be what you’d want for the purpose of initially storing your books, most likely. Rather, you’d want a storage and fulfillment service.

 

The reasonable limits of a "garage operation" start to overflow when you’re talking of a thousand-copy print run. A couple hundred copies of a book you’ll still store comfortably at your home, but more than that might require some sort of semi-professional arrangement.

6. Is there a lot of specialized experience I’d need to not be totally in over my head?

 

The part you’ll need knowledge about is the layout and printing process, because you’ll need to be able to make the correct choices for your project when it comes to printer services. You can get somewhere by getting a responsive printer that cares enough to explain things to you, but probably your best bet is to work closely with somebody who’s done it before and ask them to help you with drafting your quote request and other such technical details.

PDF Distribution

 

How expensive is it to run a server where people can download and redownload a PDF they’ve purchased, yourself?  How much does a site like SmashWords charge to sell your PDFs?

The cost of having a basic web site is pretty small – tens of dollars annually. Having a specific domain increases the costs somewhat. Setting up PDF delivery is technically intensive, but not expensive. So you could pay somebody to set it up for you, or you could learn the technology yourself, or you could use an existing service to manage your pdf downloads for you – using an external service can be very cheap, a minor expense. So overall I’d say that expense is not something you should worry about when it comes to selling pdf files. Heck, if your sales are low-intensity, you could just email the pdf files yourself to your customers.

 

I haven’t used any of the sites like SmashWords, so I’ll leave someone with more experience to answer that; I can’t tell you offhand what their cut is.