Category: First Impressions

Working with a Book Cover Designer

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I don’t believe in judging a person by his or her appearance, but I definitely judge a book by its cover, and so do readers.Just say no to amateurish design. You want readers to take you seriously, don’t you?

If you care about your book, you need to care about your cover. As a former graphic designer, it’s easy for me to tell, based on cover alone, most indie-published books from professionally published ones. Some small presses hire amateur designers, too. Here are some tips to avoid amateur designs and get the best design for your book (or your buck).

7 Tips for Authors Working with a Book Cover Designer

7 Tips for Working with a Book Cover Designer:

  • Unless you’re a trained designer, your design ideas will likely be derivative of visual cliches you’re used to seeing.
  • Saying “do whatever you want” can often be paralyzing to a designer with a thousand ideas.
  • Therefore, give the professional designer direction but not management. Ask for a creative brief, a tool which helps the designer understand what you want. Give the designer a few ideas to get him or her going, and then let the pro do his or her job.
  • It’s often better to say what you don’t like than what you do. “Can we avoid the color orange?” is better than “My favorite color is purple. I want it purple.”
  • If you provide images or ideas, make it clear that they are to inspire, not require the designer to follow them.
  • Create a Pinterest board of your favorite book covers to understand what styles you like. It can also be a useful addition to a creative brief. (Sharing this with your designer will be especially helpful if you hire a newbie designer.)
  • Know your genre. A good book cover gives the reader an expectation of what the pages inside hold.

cover-designs

If you’re working with a traditional publisher, they will have an in-house design team.

If you’re self-publishing or working with a small press that hires freelancers, here’s a round-up of cover designers.

If you are absolutely confident in your ability to DIY, here’s a tutorial to get you started. However, I strongly recommend researching typography basics before trying to make a cover yourself. Specifically learn hierarchy, legibility, and how to pair fonts. Creative Market has consistently solid typefaces. Stay away from Papyrus, Comic Sans, Impact, Copperplate, and Scriptina. If a display, handwriting, or script font is pre-installed on your computer, you can bet it’s a cliche. I also recommend learning from the good, the bad, and the ugly book covers at The Book Designer’s eBook Cover Design contests.

Click to Tweet: 7 Tips for Authors Working with a Book Cover Designer via @larathelark http://ctt.ec/JWS8T+

10 Weeks Till Truest: The Evolution of a Book Cover

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Tuesday is Truestday! Follow Jackie to get some insight on the publishing process. Her debut novel hits shelves in September!

JACKIE LEA SOMMERS

t10Join me in counting down the final weeks till Truest’s publication! Every Tuesday, I’ll be posting something Truest-related. Please feel free to re-blog, pin, tweet, share on Facebook, etc.– I’d love to get the word out! And, of course, you can pre-order your own copy here!

Today I’m excited to share with you how Truest‘s book cover came to be. (And please excuse the weird formatting toward the end– once I started inserting pictures, it all went haywire!)

At the end of April 2014, Laurel, an editor at Katherine Tegen Books, sent me this email:

While Jill is still working on gathering notes for you on the latest revision, I have another exciting step in the publication process. We get to start thinking about your cover! Jill and I will fill out a form to share with our designers—who work serious magic and make the best…

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Friday Reads: THE FANGIRL’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Sam Maggs

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Friday Reads is a new series on Write, Edit, Repeat. I’ll only be blogging about my favorites (no room for negativity here), and I’ll end with a writing prompt. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already, and then you won’t miss out. Adult fiction, YA fiction, MG, graphic novels, picture books—I’ll cycle through them all, sometimes posting monthly, sometimes weekly.

For the archive of Friday Reads posts, visit bit.ly/LaraReads.

I also allow guest reviews! Today I’ve got Caitlin Vanasse reviewing The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs.

Read her review, then enter for a chance to win a copy of the book!

First Impressions

The Cover

Fangirl_final_72dpi

The Blurb

Fanfic, cosplay, cons, books, memes, podcasts, vlogs, OTPs and RPGs and MMOs and more—it’s never been a better time to be a girl geek. The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy is the ultimate handbook for ladies living the nerdy life, a fun and feminist take on the often male-dominated world of geekdom.

With delightful illustrations and an unabashed love for all the in(ternet)s and outs of geek culture, this book is packed with tips, playthroughs, and cheat codes for everything from starting an online fan community to planning a convention visit to supporting fellow female geeks in the wild.

Reading

First, thank you so much to Lara for letting me borrow on her blog today to review The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Handbook for Geek Girls by Sam Maggs.

When I heard that Sam Maggs, editor of The Mary Sue, was writing a guide to girl-geekdom, I was quite intrigued. As a girl who grew up watching Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager, borrowing my brother’s Nintendo Power, and reading every essential comic collection my library had, I’ve considered myself a geek girl (or a nerd) for quite sometime. When I had the opportunity to request a copy for review from Quirk Books, I was more than a little excited. (Disclaimer: I requested and received this book from the publisher, Quirk Books, for review.)

The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy is a reference book in four sections: An introduction to different fandoms, an introduction to girl geek spaces on the internet, a guide to conventions, and a section on geek girl feminism. Interspersed between each section are super short (3-question) interviews with prominent women in geekdom.

I found this to be a good reference; there were definitely things I already knew, which I think will be true of most readers, but there was plenty of new information and things well said in a way that I found really helpful for figuring out how to express them myself.  My personal favorite section was the one with advice for conventions (probably because I’m at a point where I’m just starting to think about going to conventions, and so it was the most helpful personally), but I think depending on where the reader is, different sections might be more useful.

Right before picking this up I saw a review mention that the feminism section seemed a bit tacked on.  I think the meat of that section was actually really great. It contained an extensive list of recommendations of great female characters in various forms of media (books, movies, television, anime, comics, and manga) and a short section on being critical consumers of the media we love, both of which I think any geek girl would be interested in. But I think the transition to that section was really poor. Rather than suggesting that Fandom can, in some ways, be what we want it to be, it felt pushy rather than convincing. It was really a disservice to the chapter and ill-fitting considered with the tone of the rest of the book.

I also felt that the interviews, although a nice element to break up the chapters, were too short to really provide much substance. They weren’t really personalized, were fairly superficial questions, and were less than a page each. They function more as a list of interesting women in geekdom to follow than interesting content on their own.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book and could see myself referencing it or lending or gifting it to friends.

But, because I received this finished copy from the publisher I’d like to give you an opportunity to have it.  I’m giving away the finished copy I was given. I did read it, so it’s gently used, and I’ll be shipping from the US, so this giveaway is only open to US shipping addresses. But if you’re interested and eligible please do enter below!

About Caitlin

Caitlin Vanasse was raised on StarTrek Voyager and Bill Nye as well as princesses and puppies. Never afraid to call herself a nerd, you can find her on the internet talking about books on Youtube at BookChats and retweeting all manner of things on Twitter @CaitlinVanasse.

Recommendations

Follow Caitlin’s YouTube channel, BookChats, for plenty of book recommendations from this geeky girl reviewer, or read The Fangirl’s Guide for recommendations. Also read the comments here for favorite female

Writing Prompt

Two options today:

A. Write a short creative nonfiction story or poem about a geeky experience you’ve had.

B. Choose two fictional females and write a short story or scene in which they meet.

Giveaway

If you live in the US and would like the chance to win a copy of The Fangirl’s Guide, please click here to go to the Rafflecopter page. There are many ways to enter!

Friday Reads: THE CONSPIRACY OF US by Maggie Hall

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My resolution for 2015 is all about organization. That means introducing new blog series, switching some style guides, and improving reader experience! You’ll notice that “Write Lara Write” is now “Write, Edit, Repeat.” Same URL to keep things simple (writelarawrite.wordpress.com), but a new name, since this blog is about the crafts of writing and editing, not my personal writing site (which is coming…eventually).

And since it’s not just me anymore, I’m opening the blog up for guest posts! Apply here.

Friday Reads is a new series on Write, Edit, Repeat. I’ll only be blogging about my favorites (no room for negativity here), and I’ll end with a writing prompt. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already, and then you won’t miss out. Adult fiction, YA fiction, MG, graphic novels, picture books—I’ll cycle through them all, sometimes posting monthly, sometimes weekly.

For the archive of Friday Reads posts, visit bit.ly/LaraReads.

Today I’m reviewing The Conspiracy of Us, a YA romantic thriller by Maggie Hall, and one of the most highly anticipated YA reads of 2015.

First Impressions

First Impressions walks through my method of judging books by their title, cover, and cover copy before I pick up a book.

The Title

“The Conspiracy of Us” is a strange, yet evocative title (I’ll be using the word “evocative” a lot when talking about covers and titles—sorry/not sorry). The word “conspiracy” suggests the thriller genre akin to The Da Vinci Code; “us” suggests romance or a close relationship. Since this is a romantic thriller, the title is extremely effective with its word choice.

The Cover

Consp

If you couldn’t tell this was a thriller from the word “conspiracy,” you’ll get the worldwide-thriller vibe from the cover. The city overlays, the compass—travel. The skewed phantom text shadowing the title implies mystery or possibly some chase scenes.

And we’ve got the subject, a teen girl in a gorgeous ball gown. Intrigue! Mystery! Travel!

Then you look at the tagline: “An ancient puzzle. A trail of clues. An unwanted destiny.”

So basically a teen girl is part Chosen One, part Indiana Jones. If there’s remotely a connection to Indiana Jones or Han Solo, I am so there.

The Blurb

Instead of breaking down the blurb like I did with After I Do and Maybe in Another Life, we’re going to do the 69 test instead, because it was such a great representation of the book, that’s what the publisher put on the back cover:

Elisa led me to a three-way mirror, where a girl who hardly looked like me stared back in triplicate. In the silver gown, the girl looked more serious, more elegant, then they changed me into the gold dress again, and she was glamorous, striking.

I found myself hoping fiercely that my mom would let me stay for the ball, and even a little longer. Meet the Saxons, find out more about my father’s family and the rest of the Circle. To feel like I belonged in this strange, fascinating world.

“You have to choose eventually.” Elisa smiled. In the mirror, the gold sequins shimmered. But there was something about the silver. It belonged on me.

Aimee unzipped the gold dress and left me to get out of it, following Elisa downstairs to wrap the silver one. I watched it go. I couldn’t believe that, just like that, it was going to be mine.

I was about step out of the gold dress when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. “Elisa?” I said. “Aimee?” There was no answer.

In case it was one of the men come to escort me down, I zipped the dress up.

The girls were nowhere in sight, but the man who had let us in stood at the top of the staircase.

“Sorry, I’m not ready yet,” I said. I smiled at him, and he reached into his jacket pocket.

He pulled out something that, for a moment, didn’t register. It was too discordant with the marble floors, the dresses, the Bach chiming from the speakers.

It was a knife.

Read more about Maggie’s 69 Test here. And participate in #70Pit in July to share your page 69 or 70 and possibly win edits or get agent requests!

Reading

This was a fun novel to read. If you go in expecting the prophecy and Chosen One tropes (they’re implied right there on the cover), then you probably won’t expect this to be something that it’s not. What it is, is fun. And there really are similarities to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with the Chosen One storyline like The Mummy Returns. Like those movies, there’s slow building romance (yes, please), plenty of sexual tension (all PG-13), some melodrama in parts, chase scenes, murderous bad guys, kinda murderous good guys, and adventure.

Those movies are called popcorn flicks. Not quite sure what the book equivalent is called, but keep your arms inside the vehicle and enjoy the ride.

Recommendations

If you like The Conspiracy of Us, you might like books by Ally Carter.

Writing Prompt

The main character, Avery West, is destined to be important, but she resists her destiny. Write about either 1) a time you were anxious about an outcome you knew was coming but had no power over, or 2) a time you rejected someone else’s plan for you.