design

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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We Interrupt This Program

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Two events are going to put a slight zig in the zag of this blog over the next week. Even if you follow my blog religiously, you may not notice either one of them, but I think it’s good practice to have full disclosure.

Facelift
After some careful consideration and advice from friends and family, I’ll be testing out a new theme (MistyLook) and layout for the site this week. The aim is to increase readability, improve access, and to speed up the reader experience on the site. Thanks to WordPress’s almost seamless theme integration, the only thing you may notice is your own sigh of relief as you read my 600-1200 words post in regular black-type-on-a-white background instead of reverse type.

Major changes will be:

  • Black type-on-a-white background for easier reading
  • Wider central column for less scrolling
  • Homepage will be the blog (like the rest of the universe), not fluff text
  • Post summaries with “read more” links instead of entire post
  • Nicer serif to sans-serif font changes for titles vs. content areas

Nothing to do with the theme, but planned-for changes in the future:

  • Richer, more meaningful masthead graphic
  • A side-bar “Best of” list of my better blog posts for easier finding

Hiatus
My wife and I will be taking a short trip to Key West next week. I’ll be scheduling blog posts to keep up the conversation, but may not be able to thank you for commenting or add to the chatter myself. But please know I value each and every comment, “Like”, and pingback!

We’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled commentary by February 24. Thanks for your patience and thank you for following my blog.