Tips for eAuthors

A Primer on Covers – Part II

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This is the second part in a three part series about book cover design. The intended audience is the self-publishing writer with little design experience. The guidelines I set forth are from my experience working with my own self-published titles, with graphic designers, and about twelve years of web design experience (which is no substitute for experience in print design).

In the first part of this series, I talked about the importance of typography in setting both your title and author line apart from the fonts of workaday web pages, white papers, and emails that have desensitized many readers to the impact and beauty of the most popular fonts.

In this stage, I’ll get away from typography for a second and talk about what I consider the second important attribute of a winning cover: a single, stunning professional picture.

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Me in my (literary) underwear

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While I continue to toil with Part II of my Book Cover Design Primer, I’m also trying to put out Blueblood, the second in the Marty Singer crime fiction series.

The good news is that the line edits came back from my editor, the inimitable Alison Dasho. The bad news is that I have to go through my manuscript as meticulously as she did and weigh her suggestions, then either make or disregard them (the latter does not happen very often). The impact Alison’s line edits have made are already obvious to me and I’m only a third of the way through.

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A Primer on Covers – Part I

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There are a lot of good book cover sites out there, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents, as I enjoy making my own covers, I’ve received compliments on them, and I have about 15 years of web (not print) design behind me.

Why Should You Bother?
If you don’t have a lick of design or illustration experience behind you, you may be asking why bother with knowing any of this? I won’t be making my covers, that’s for the artist to do.

If you’ve been writing for a while, this is a lot like the question that many modern writing guides warn against when it comes to submitting your work to agents. Why should I edit my work? That’s what editors at publishing houses get paid to do.

The answer is the same: if you don’t give a tinker’s cuss about every aspect of your work, you can be sure no one else will. No, scratch that. They’ll give less than a tinker’s cuss. And that’s not much.

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Tip Tuesday: Professional Writers’ Organizations

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I’m starting a new weekly feature on the blog, Tip Tuesday, where I pass on a few things I’ve learned about writing craft, self-publishing, editing, and the culture and community of authors.

If you like what you’ve read, please throw a LIKE at the bottom of the post and share with friends you think could benefit.


It’s often said writing can be a lonely profession, and that applies whether you’re a novice or have been cranking out novels for years.

For someone just starting out, however, there’s the added burden of not being sure where to start; it can often be a case of “you don’t know what you don’t know.” But for those lost in the metaphorical woods of writing, professional writing organizations can be a good place to find your way and for a reasonable (usually less than $100/year) price.

While many organizations exist to help represent established (i.e., traditionally published) writers, most of them understand that established authors were all amateurs at some stage and offer some guidance and support for newbies, as well as recognizing the growing contingent of self-published writers out there. Genre writing, especially, has many helpful organizations.

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The Six-Day Fantasy Swag Post-Mortem, Part II

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This is a breakdown of a recent KDP Select experiment (a six-day sale 6/22-6/26) I ran on three short fantasy titles of mine—Sword of Kings, Assassin, and Seven Into the Bleak—to see if visibility for one would mean sustained visibility for all. Read Part I here.

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