The Basics of Making Your Own Cover

The biggest lie that has ever been told about books is that you cannot judge them by their cover. This is the first and sometimes only interaction people will have with your book, so you need to be sure that it looks professional. I have seen a lot of self-published covers over the years that leave much to be desired—my own books included. Online cover creators are an easy way to slap something on the book you’ve written, but the design limitations of these tools actually do more harm than spending the money to hire someone to make your cover. All this being said, there are some easy ways you can make your own cover as long as you avoid a few common mistakes. Fonts Matter. At a minimum, there should be two boxes of text on your cover: your name and the title of the book. You’d be surprised to see some covers that don’t match the font for these two...
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Two Creative Certainties: Taxes [PART 2/2]

It may come as a surprise that taxes are marginally easier than death when you’re a creative individual. While the latter requires explicit and detailed instructions on what to do upon your passing, the former is something you can control and often doesn’t involve more than a few extra forms when you’re filling out taxes for the year. Still, if you are selling anything that you created, the government will want a cut of that income. The one thing to be careful of here is that often this endeavor is considered a “hobby” instead of a business. If you want this extra income to be a business, it needs to be making a profit on an annual basis for many years. Consider how much you spend on stocking your inventory of products, advertising, and the variety of other costs that contribute to your creativity before determining if you’re even in the black when it comes to your business (which will...
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How an iPhone, a comforter, and a Christmas tree helped me record my first audiobook

How an iPhone, a comforter, and a Christmas tree helped me record my first audiobook

Ten years ago, I had just released First Name Basis and was excited that my book was in a physical format. I could grab a paperback copy of my book and flip through it just like any other big-name author. However, when I tried selling this book, most people would ask, "Is it in eBook format?" This question confused me because I figured anyone could make an eBook. It takes a bit more effort to produce a physical product like a paperback. After finally caving and creating an eBook for First Name Basis, everything was fine...for a few years. Now, everyone asks if it's in audiobook format. *sigh* Don't get me wrong; I understand the appeal of audiobooks. The majority of the books I read each year are in the audiobook format because I can multitask something menial while also absorbing a book. For self-published authors, the problem with audiobooks is that they are significantly more complex to create than an...
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The right way to ask for reviews

It’s weird to think that I’ve written more than 600 reviews since I started my website back in 2016. Of course, as I cross-post these reviews to various sites like IMDb, Goodreads, and Amazon, I started receiving requests for reviews relatively soon after I started gaining some traction from my posts (my reviewer ranking is above 23,000). I’ll ignore the requests clearly from Chinese sellers trying to manipulate their Amazon rankings, but I do have a soft spot for authors. Unfortunately, (as I've written about before) most authors don’t know how to interact with reviewers—especially when sending a request via e-mail. They all understand the value of reviews, but they don’t take the time to ensure they’re making the best first impression. After all, reviewers are people and sending a review request is much like pitching an agent: you want to show you’ve done your homework. As a result, most reviewers will ignore these requests or send them to their spam...
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An Author’s Online Presence [PART 2/2]

Last month, I wrote about how an author should have some form of an online presence. Engaging with the writing community and potential readers is easy to do when starting out. Social media helps connect people online, so it should be the first place to start when developing a writer brand. Even if a writer hasn’t published anything yet, these profiles help legitimize what they’re trying to do in the off-chance that they do decide to proceed into publication (either self or traditional). And while social media is somewhat “unofficial” in the sense that anyone can sign up and participate in it, there are plenty of self-published authors who are missing out on some “official” portals of information that they can control. These are the places where customers are likely to come to search for information on a particular book or author, so it’s essential to ensure that they look like they’ve been set up instead of having default data displayed. Just...
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How to handle a bad review

You can’t please all people all the time. The best you can do is please most people most of the time. This adage is as true in life as it is to writing. Some readers will love your book, others will not. We all love to receive glowing reviews, as they boost our confidence, but what about those readers and reviewers who don’t care for our book? While I’ve received a few bad reviews for my books, as a reviewer of books, I have had to write some bad reviews. If your book is out there for the public to read, you have to expect to receive a bad review eventually. There are two ways to deal with these negative reviews: the right way and the wrong way. How you handle bad reviews says a lot about who you are as an author. My first one-star review was for my first book, First Name Basis. While I was upset that I received this bad...
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What to avoid when asking for reviews

For almost a year now, I’ve been writing reviews of books and posting my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. At first, I began doing this because I started signing up for giveaways on Goodreads. My plan was to read the books, review them, then use them as prizes for the participants of National Novel Writing Month in my region. When I realized it was also easy web content for my website, I dove wholeheartedly into these reviews. After all, I had been writing movie reviews for many years, so 300+ words on a book I just read shouldn’t be too difficult. What I did not expect was that soon people would be contacting me to review their books. When I received my first request to review a book, I was flattered that someone had found my review on Amazon and decided that they liked my review enough to send me their book to review as well. However, I soon realized what...
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