Yesterday I posted 7 Tips for Authors Working with a Book Designer.
I also created a new page of recommended book cover designers. You can find it under the “Getting Published” tab in my navigation menu.
Have an illustrator or book publicist you’d like to recommend? Comment below! I’d like to create recommendation pages for these services as well. Please include link to their website.
(Comments are moderated. If yours doesn’t appear right away, it will once I’ve approved it.)
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).
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+
In perhaps my most awkward post ever on publishing, I share seven milestones for expectant authors, from puberty (first drafts) to birth day (book launch).
Click the image to read the full post on Ava Jae’s blog.
The following is an excerpt from my first BookDeeply event. To help me decide which novel or genre to do next, leave a comment below! To join and unlock TruestSem at any time, start here.
“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, […] it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” — Anton Chekhov
[Truest spoilers removed]
The trick to writing foreshadowing is that you don’t write it.
You plant it.
And then you make it blend into its surroundings.
If you know a character is going to get shot, you go back to the very beginning and put a gun on the wall.
Sometimes you’ll plant foreshadowing during revision.
Sometimes you’ll have so much foreknowledge of your plot, you can write it in as you go. If you’ve ever read the Harry Potter series, you know that J.K. Rowling planted foreshadowing several novels ahead. But that’s the exception, not the rule.
Writing is rewriting. The best writers are average writers who kept rewriting.
What about other details—if nothing happens with them later, are they red herrings? No, they’re set design.
(For more information on writing details, see my post Becoming a Fan Favorite: Writing Description and Direction.)
Back in the times of ancient Greek drama, a contraption might spring forth a god to save the protagonist from almost certain doom. Hence the name deus ex machina. In contemporary fiction, the protagonist needs to face their greatest fight—or question—without the help from their allies.
Next up:
Help me pick a debut novel to read in March 2016! What genre or novel would you like to BookDeeply?
The novel needs to
Leave your questions, comments, or BookDeeply suggestions below!
Lara Willard 