Tonight after reading some of Gary V.’s new book Jab, Jab, Jab, Punch I followed his advice and searched Twitter for “book cover design” – by way of which I discovered Alastair Humphreys’ invitation for someone to redesign his book cover. I wasn’t familiar with Alastair so I would have passed the opportunity...
I have a suspicion, or maybe more like a prejudice, that all the best writers and artists are introverts. We are proud and independent, we like to spend time on our own with our own ideas, we excel at keeping ourselves entertained with the creative production of our own worlds. I distrust extroverted writers and The 3 secrets to book...
I’m a casual browser of book marketing and promotion sites. I also deal with a lot of authors asking about book promotion companies and services. In general, I say to steer clear. Paying someone else to market your book is a losing gamble, and you’ll very rarely make even a fraction of your money back. The 3 secrets to book...
I used to be a full-time editor. Since then, I don’t often read amateur/mediocre books. I rarely have time to read as it is, so I only read brilliant, perfected writing. Unless I’m helping somebody out with a review, cover, or something else – in which case the book may be suffering from common rookie The 3 secrets to book...
If you’ve published a book, you probably already know that reviews are essential to sales: having a bunch of reviews on your Amazon page should be your #1 pre-marketing goal. But recent book review scandals have made everybody skeptical and overly prejudiced against paid book reviews. Paid book reviews – it is assumed – are...
Recently a lot of my authors have been sending the printing requirements for the small presses and publishers they’ve signed up with. These are author services companies, that usually charge a huge up-front fee (average $1000 for ebook publishing, $3000 for ebook and POD print book). But since these publishers and small presses have...
Developing my own philosophy of Creativindie and working on a manifesto for this site, I’ve been reading all the books on creativity that I can find. Some offer valuable tips. Others are inspirational but mostly useless in terms of making your own success through creative talents. These books range between academic researchers with real...
I mainly use stock photography for my book cover designs, but if I can’t find anything, I search long and hard to find an alternative. With book cover art, you need to be careful to get permission so you aren’t breaking copyright. But at the same time, copyright laws are confusing and open to creative The 3 secrets to book...
Createspace just announced that Matte cover finish is now available for print books, on new and existing titles. For the past decade or so, that option was only available on Lightning Source. So let’s talk about which one you should choose: Matte is smoother and has less glare, but the colors are slightly muted. For The 3 secrets to...
Sometime yesterday my faulty hard drive crashed, so for the past 24 hours I’ve been reinstalling, rebooting, and restoring files – thankfully I recently signed up for an online backup service (BackBlaze), otherwise the loss of data would be devastating. As it is, I’m kind of on a forced leave of absence (I can’t do...
Note: I almost deleted this post because I’m not sure whether I agree with myself. Cover design reveals are fine if you have a large audience and you don’t make a big deal out of it, or when you reveal in conjunction with a book launch – like “here is the cover for my new The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted...
I’ve been designing covers for a few years, and I often have to confront cover design myths perpetuated by indie-publishing gurus and thought leaders. There’s a lot of advice out there for indie authors, and some of it is contradictory, which has the unfortunate effect of allowing indie authors to accept the advice they like The...
