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Book Cover Design: the Golden Rule

~ jaqhazell.com ~ 1 Comment

A well designed book cover will certainly improve a book’s chances in today’s crowded market, so what are the secrets of successful book cover design?

At the recent London Book Fair I attended a talk by Damian Horner, brand development director at Hachette, and this is a brief summary of his advice for authors:

1 Membership – look at the genre rules for book covers and ask, am I a member of that group?

2 Lust Factor – you have to look at it and love it. Does it stand out? If it’s fresh, you’ll look again.

3 Blink Test – is there one stand out thing that people will take away if they look quickly?

4 Title – Important for search engine optimisation and for design. Is your title strong and memorable?

LONDON TSUNAMI5 Straplines – these can explain the title but they can be messy and are not always necessary.

6 Retailer – think about how the thumbnail sized version works, important for Amazon etc, and also think of how your book will sit spine out in a bookshop such as Waterstones.

7 Hierarchy – Title or author? It’s best to choose one or the other.

GOLDEN RULE – BE CLEAR BEFORE YOU’RE CLEVER

With all this in mind I got to work on my cover for LONDON TSUNAMI & OTHER STORIES which is a collection of 21 contemporary stories set in London.

After initially going in the wrong direction with several ideas (including a linocut that took me at least a week), I settled on a photograph of some flats that I have been fascinated by for years. By day the building looks drab while by night it’s transformed by its central pillar of glowing windows. There are so many different and equally vibrant lives being lived in that one building and my collection is a bit like that – 21 stories of different people, of different ages, leading different lives in west London.

Hello Scrivener

~ jaqhazell.com ~ 2 Comments

I first heard about Scrivener at a Guardian Masterclass on self-publishing in London. It then began to pop up as the software of choice in various books and blogs on the subject, so I thought I’d take a look and downloaded the free trial from Literature & Latte. Within 24 hours I upgraded to the full package.

After years of using Word I’m not going to say the switch to Scrivener was easy. There’s a lot to learn and many questions arise daily if not hourly, but with the help of blogs, YouTube videos, and Scrivener for Dummies I’m muddling through to format my first scripts for ebook publication.

SHOPPINGThe major advantage of Scrivener is of course its ability to do the formatting for you – in a number of different ways in order to satisfy the needs of Kindle, Kobo, iBooks etc.

So far I’ve been particularly impressed by how it compiles a proof copy. It produces an easy-to-read script with lots of space for corrections.

Anyway, after much huffing and puffing and frantic searching for answers on great mysteries such as how to ensure all my paragraph indents match, I have managed to publish on Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords etc a dark, humorous short story called, SHOPPING AT TESCO. And, with even more effort I’ve managed to ensure it is available for free.