Tag Archives: book covers

Self-publishing progress?

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Another week of mayhem and progress – of sorts. Having made my proof-readers’ lives hell by pressing them to complete as much as possible against the clock (with the rather minimal bribe of runner beans) I entered all their brilliant catches into my final file in InDesign and… pressed the button to send the text to the printer.

I then got my head round the file requirements of the cover picture, recreated the file with the correct dimensions (then correcting that when I found I had misunderstood) and sent it for checking to a great designer (whose time I can only afford by the minute).

BL Cover Finaljpgsmall

On Saturday I received an email:

Apologies for the s – l – o – w announcement of a competition winner, but the announcement (and my reasoning) can be found here:
http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/win-a-free-cover-design/#comment-101835
Well done, Hilary. Commiserations everyone else. [there were all of 6 entrants]

Umm… although I have reservations about my cover (because it has no figure in it), I have grown fond of the beautiful image my daughter put together and I want it to go to the printers as soon as possible. (NB you are never sufficiently ahead of the game in publishing), so I felt I had to turn down this opportunity – something I would have lain in the mud for a few weeks ago. However, we have a compromise. I will now have a design by Bronze Design for my eBook version of Border Line.

CORRECTION: I now have bronze level design by 99Designs for my eBook version of Border Line.

I have also been in touch with the travel company, Just Slovenia, who, way back in 2009, helped me set up an itinerary to research many of the places that feature in Border Line. They responded and I have now sent them a PDF of the novel.

I’m not accustomed to so much progress up the ladder, I’d better get ready for another snake.

Threadgold Press – lessons learnt

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24

[This is a moan, so feel free to jump to pictures at the end]

One of the privileges of being your own publisher is being able to choose your own book cover. Over the last month I have really concentrated on this (actually since April, if I’m honest). Ignoring the Really Good Advice to pay for professional work, I have become intimate with the foibles of InDesign; my numerous attempts to create a cover now run to over 50 files.

I am exhausted and depressed, I have used up all my credit with my nearest and dearest, the garden is untended, the vegetable plot a riot of weeds and my in-tray is overflowing. Each night I have new ideas and each morning I start again expecting the perfect cover to appear under my hands. But it hasn’t, and I am now finally ready to compromise. My daughter, Amy, has produced something better than any of the ones I attempted and while I still feel, churlishly, that it is not what I had in mind, it is simple and beautiful and I need to stop NOW.

So here are a few more rejected designs (and they are not the weirdest):

BL cover tests29.pr BL cover tests32.pr - Version 3 BL cover tests26.pr BL cover tests21.pr

That’s enough amateur graphics. Here are some lilies (smelling heavenly) and hydrangeas to finish with. Tomorrow, I will pick beans and weed the veg bed.

DSCN6205 DSCN6202 DSCN6201 DSCN6199I’ve been Lindy Hopping this evening, so I feel more human.

 

Titles, covers and how to get it wrong.

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I am in the process of self publishing a novel. This has the title Border Line, which should (I hope) give rise to thoughts about the borders of a country, the edges of sanity and the distance between of success and failure.

I am setting the text using InDesign, but as I can’t afford Photoshop to do the cover work, I  downloaded the free illustration software, Gimp. In order to familiarise myself with the basics I knocked up a random cover by grabbing a recent photo and putting in some text in a couple of colours. Feeling quite pleased with myself for getting this far, I emailed the result to a friend and my husband…

Gimp testjpeg

… to whom it is obvious that I have written a book on gardening – How to Keep Your Border in Line!

A few days before this effort, I mocked up some simple photo and text covers in InDesign, and printed these off (along with one professional) one to show to a group of friends. I asked them which ones(s) they would pick up and turn over to read the blurb. Several unerringly picked the professional one (a lovely image, but not related to the story). They then made clear that what mattered to them, apart from the cover’s initial attraction, was that it should be relevant to the story. Nothing seemed to irritate more than a misleading image (which, as I feared, counts out the lovely image).

Does the relevance of the cover image matter to you? Here is a pdf of the covers, if anyone feels like spotting the professional one.

cover tests

 

Almost writing again…book cover queries… new arrival.

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I have been utterly committed to the garden (and, of course, to our visitors) for the last two months and writing has been low on the agenda – but not forgotten. Just over a week ago I finally bought InDesign (publishing software) and my extraordinarily patient cousin has come all the way from Sweden and is walking me through the basics of setting the text of my novel into a printable format, and creating a cover.

He created the cover of my previous novel.
 Unseen coverpic

We have also discussed (argued about) the desirable qualities of a cover illustration. How much should it indicate either genre or content? Do people really pick up a book (or reject it) because of it’s cover. All opinions welcomed!

The novel will be titled Border Line. I shall be glad to know if this suggests a genre to people… and if so, which?

As I will need to create an ebook too, I have finally justified the purchase of an iPad mini. DSCN5735

And it’s past midnight and my husband and cousin are asleep… oh for a few more hours in the day.