The cover of your book plays many crucial roles in the marketing of your book. But for many people, the first time they’ll see the cover is in a listing online, an Amazon page, or an email. This makes the representation of your cover in electronic form even more important than ever. And if you […]
Cover Design
Self-Publishing Basics: Why You Need a Category on the Back Cover of Your Book
When you become a self-publisher you have to learn to think like a bookseller. That makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, you are now responsible for the sales life of your book, and the most important single thing that you need to know is how to sell your book to the person who, even though […]
Real World Book Design: Designing for Print-on-Demand Production
As the technology we use to manufacture books changes, designers responsible for creating those books adapt. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes reluctantly. But they adapt, because the new technology will eventually supplant the old technology. Today most books are still printed by offset lithography, and any print run over about 1,000 units will benefit from the more […]
Indie Business Memoir Scores Major Reviews
I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with my wife and infant son in 1993. We were glad to escape the winters in New York, and had many friends in the area. But leaving home can be hard in other ways. Growing up in the Bronx and, later, lower Westchester, we were accustomed to […]
Project Focus: 2-Color Cover Design for Trade Publishers
For offset printing, 2-color covers can be much more economical than 4-color covers, particularly for short-run books. I discussed two 2-color covers for self-published books in a previous article and explained why these covers are often preferred by publishers. Here I look at two covers done for trade publishers. This first cover was designed for […]
Self Publishing Basics: How to Create Your ARC Cover
Years ago I used to buy books at a famous bookstore in downtown New York City, in the old book selling district. This bookstore was famous for the range of subjects it carried, its steady inflow of new books, and the lively and sometimes erudite people you could meet browsing the narrow aisles looking for […]
Project Focus: 2-color Cover Design for Self-Publishers
Before the advent of digital printing and print-on-demand production, publishers had no choice but to print on offset presses, and most books today continue to be printed by offset. Book presses are large, noisy, oily pieces of heavy machinery. There are separate parts of the press for each color that will be printed, with separate […]
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 […]
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 […]