Commissioning Art for Your Book

Commissioning Art for Your Book

by benmweilertNo Comments
Most people judge a book by its cover. It's the first thing they'll see, and it should give them a sense of what to expect inside. If you can't clearly communicate the title and genre with your cover, it's likely your readers will be disappointed with what they have purchased. Astute readers can easily recognize when a book uses a cover creator with stock footage, which is an easy indicator to weed out authors who don't invest some money into their book. While I certainly started with these cover creator covers, I've made an effort as time goes on to try and commission art for the covers of my books. A few months ago, I wrote about some of the costs associated with self-publishing a book. One of these costs is hiring an artist to create art for your cover. While this sounds simple, there is a process that you'll need to follow. Sometimes it's so exciting to see the art...
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Why a book is more than just words

by benmweilertNo Comments
Go over to your bookshelf. Pick up your favorite book and open it up. What do you see? If your only answer is “words,” then take a second look. Flip through a few pages. Now, what do you see? Do you notice that it looks like a book? What do I mean by that? Essentially, all the other elements of page design—besides the words themselves—are what help make a book into what it is. That being said, I’ve seen some issues with self-published books that I feel I need to address. Good design balances negative space. Even though this post is mostly about the design of a book’s interior, the first place to start is with the words themselves. Open up your favorite book again and look at the words. Now, see where there are no words? The indents at the start of paragraphs and the chunks of space to the right of fast-paced dialogue create negative space that helps the reader...
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