Today we had our monthly meeting of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA). Attendance was good, discussion was lively, and our guest speaker gave an excellent presentation. What struck me today, however, was the one-hour Question and Answer session that occupies the first part of our meetings. “What should be in a press kit […]
Self Publishing Basics: How to Read an ISBN
Some years ago, I published a book that landed on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, which was quite a thrill for my wife and me, as we were running our publishing company from a spare bedroom in our house. Soon enough, the phone started to ring, and one call […]
A Long Slog through the OCR Swamp
This post is the third in a series about the creation of a new book. To see all the articles in the series, click “The Journey of a Book” tab at the top of the page. While contemplating the hours it was going to take to make all the corrections to the files produced by […]
Series Design Presents Unique Book Design Challenges
Some years ago I was asked to redesign the journal of the Swedenborg Foundation, Chrysalis. This journal presents essays, art, and spiritually-oriented material for their worldwide membership. The new design was clean and organized, and in the process I began a series of cover designs that went on for numerous issues. We needed to create […]
Capturing and Using Text from Old Documents in New Book Production
This post is the second in a series about the creation of a new book. To see all the articles in the series, click “The Journey of a Book” tab at the top of the page. Well, I had a “manuscript” for my next book (see previous post here). But the old word processing files […]
Project Focus: Small Square Books
For a while clients seemed to be asking for a lot of small, square books. I had done several of these and noticed some similarities in their design. Some types of book are square to accommodate both horizontal and vertical subject matter. A good example is art books of all kinds, paintings, photographs, etchings all […]
5 Favorite Fonts for Interior Book Design
There’s no bigger decision you make in designing a book than picking the body typeface. A book by its nature is a long reading experience, and as book publishers we want our books to be as easy to read as possible while communicating the author’s intent.
I Found a Book in My Garage; How a New Book Can Come Out of the Blue
Searching for old files, the author comes across the raw material for a new book drawn from lectures almost-forgotten and stored in his garage.
How To Use Twitter in 5 Minutes for Small and Independent Publishers
At the BAIPA meeting many people wanted to talk about social media and their use for self publishers who would like to use these powerful networking tools. Most people seemed hesitant to try Twitter. I certainly understand the reluctance but Twitter is actually a fairly simple site that can be used in a variety of […]