Two New Covers

This week I've completed a couple of new covers for ebooks, so I thought I'd blog a little bit about the idea and process behind these covers.

Scattered Among Strange Worlds - by Aliette de Bodard.

 

If you read modern science fiction at all, you can't have missed the impact that Franco-Vietnamese writer Aliette de Bodard has made in the last couple of years. Not only has she been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Campbell awards, and won the British Science Fiction Association award, she has also had published three 'Aztec Mystery-Fantasies' novels to much acclaim.

This ebook consists of two recent short stories by Aliette: Scattered Along the River of Heaven, and Exodus Tides.

A book cover needs to give a potential reader the immediate impression of the kind of book it is, and what a reader can expect when they open it. It doesn't, however, need to illustrate a particular scene or character from the book.

The two short stories in this collection are both science fiction, the first a far-future space opera, the second a set in near-future France. Both address the theme of immigration. Aliette's writing also is more literary than pulp (although it's certainly not slow or dull!)

The initial concept was to combine a clear space opera image with a group of Asian characters walking into the fading, unknown distance, to illustrate a diaspora scattering to the strange, distant worlds.

However, it is enormously important that an ebook cover in particular works at a thumbnail size. That means it certainly needs to be clear at a height of 115 pixels (the standard height of an image on the Amazon search results screen). Illustrating that group of people walking away in the small amount of the cover that is given over to that part of the illustration would mean it would be impossible to make out what was going on at thumbnail size.

So, I made the group of figures standing closer together, as though in a group.

The photos of the figures all come from Flickr, incidentally; it's an excellent source of photography that you can use in covers. You need to choose photographs released under a Creative Commons Attribution license (and, of course, you need to provide the credits for the photos in your ebook).

The textures that I've used in the grey section of the cover are designed to give that impression of uncertainty and unfamiliarity that people emigrating (not always willingly) can experience.

Scattered Among Strange Worlds is due to be published as an ebook at the end of July. Look out for it. The stories are excellent!

Revenge of the Homecoming Queen - by Stephanie Hale

 

By contrast, Stephanie Hale's Revenge of the Homecoming Queen is a sharp, funny YA novel with elements of mystery and romance . Here's the Goodreads description:

All that matters is what's inside...as long as there's a tiara on the outside.

The flawless Aspen Brooks was born to be Homecoming Queen. Naturally she's dating the most popular guy in school, and she's blessed with stunning good looks, excellent style, and mega brains. She's got the crown in the bag.

So why is the tiara being placed on the skanky head of cheerleader Angel Ives? The confusion only grows after ultra-dork Rand Bachrach is crowned king. To Aspen's shock and horror, Angel actually accuses her of being behind this. Whatevs!

But then something goes terribly, terribly wrong. Strange things start happening--even stranger than Angel beating Aspen. Now someone's leaving her threatening messages and slashing her tires. She's sure it's that beyotch Angel doing these things. And if Angel wants war, by Dooney & Bourke she'll get one.

Revenge of the Homecoming Queen was first published in 2007, but it has never had an ebook edition until now.

Stephanie came to me with a really strong concept for the cover. She wanted this particular photo of a young woman, but she wanted a chain necklace with the word "Revenge" on it added to the photo, as part of the book title. She also wanted a fun, 'girly' font to contrast with the more serious, high-impact photo.

I'm really pleased with the way the necklace (and the whole cover) came out. The hardest part of drawing something like the necklace onto this particular photo is that, if you look closely at it, you'll see that the photo is strongly focused on the lips and face. The neck is actually slightly out of focus, so to realistically add another element to this part of the photo, the other element actually has to be de-focused too.

That means slightly blurring the chain, and increasing the blur on it as it curves around the back of the neck.

For realism, the word "Revenge" should have been blurred too, but it also needs to be readable at various sizes, so I chose to only add a small amount of blur to the word on the chain.

Revenge of the Homecoming Queen is available now as an ebook from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

 

A Couple of Tips

If you're designing your own ebook cover, here are a couple of random tips from these two covers.

1. If you are adding a cut-out photo of a person to an image, try to avoid including the feet. It sounds weird, but the absolute hardest part of the figure to make realistic is where the feet meet the ground. Unless you are very, very good, your person will look like they are floating in the air. You can avoid this problem altogether by just not showing the feet. Note how on the first of these covers, the feet and lower legs of all four figures are hidden.
2. Take a very careful look at the direction the light is falling on a photo. In the second of these covers, the light is coming from above (and a bit in front) the model being photographed. That means that every single other element added to the photo must have the light (and the shadows) fall in the same direction. If you don't do that, it will never look right.

Okay, that's all for these covers. I really didn't mean to go on so long, I promise!

P.S., if you want to see more of my ebook covers or if you're interested in hiring me for your covers, you should check out my ebook design website.

Flora's Fury

It could sound like an exaggeration, but in this case it isn't: I have been looking forward to this book for years.

Now, this isn't a book review. I haven't got my copy yet, but I can't wait until I do.

You see, back in 2007 I think it was I was at Wiscon, the science fiction and fantasy convention, and everyone seemed to be talking about this astonishing book, Flora Segunda. Being a tad contrary and far more grumpy than my age justifies, I humphed and didn't take much notice, proving not for the first time that I am my own worst enemy.

 Anyway, not so long after, my wife, Stephanie Burgis, pressed a copy of Flora Segunda into my hands, and I actually read it, and I realized that everyone had been right. It really was an astonishing book.

Here's the goodreads description of Flora Segunda:

Flora knows better than to take shortcuts in her family home, Crackpot Hall--the house has eleven thousand rooms, and ever since her mother banished the magickal butler, those rooms move around at random. But Flora is late for school, so she takes the unpredictable elevator anyway. Huge mistake. Lost in her own house, she stumbles upon the long-banished butler--and into a mind-blowing muddle of intrigue and betrayal that changes her world forever.

Full of wildly clever plot twists, this extraordinary first novel establishes Ysabeau Wilce as a compelling new voice in teen fantasy.

But it really doesn't do justice to the fantastic, alternate-world version of California that Wilce created, nor the incredible adventures that engulf Flora.

The second book, Flora's Dare, came out in 2008, and it was just as good. And then ...

Well, publishing has its own reality, and it's not for the likes of you or me to explain or even understand them, and for some reason, the publisher then sat on the final book in the trilogy. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, the final Flora book was released. Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Importance of Packing Light is now out.

You can find out more about the book, and the other two books in the series, at Ysabeau's website, www.yswilce.com.

I will declare an interest here (other than the fact that I am an enormous fan of Ysabeau's work). A few days ago, Ysabeau contacted me because she needed her old website updating. Unfortunately, the website is old and cranky, and we've decided that it really needs an overhaul from scratch. So, I've put up a new, temporary homepage with links to where you can buy the book and where you can find out more about Ysabeau and her books.

Hopefully, over the next few days we'll have more stuff up there (including, with permission of her publisher, the opening of the novel). But, in the meantime, here's a screengrab of the temporary front page I've put up.

Enough of that. Now go and buy this awesome book! You won't regret it.

And today...

Back, oh, all the way in 2001, I was living near Bristol in the U.K., and I was training to be a science teacher. I'd just quit a job as a publisher/editor of scientific journals, and I'd taught abroad before, so I figured I'd give it a go.

The truth is, I would have been a terrible teacher. I'm a bit of a control freak, and really, that's not exactly a great qualification for dealing with a room of 30 bored teenagers. Oh yeah. Believe me.

Anyway, I was bored and I was flailing around for something more meaningful in my life. And, completely by accident, I found it. I'd finally got back to writing after many years (the benefits of a profoundly tedious job...), and I was spending a fairly high proportion of my 'work' day on Critters, the online writing workshop, critiquing other people's work and having mine torn to bits in return.

Sometime in that period, I heard of Clarion West, the actual, real, live, in-person, face-to-face, six-week, bootcamp of a writer's workshop which was held in Seattle each year. I didn't have much expectation of success, but I fired off an application anyway, and pretty much forgot about it.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, I got a phone call from one of the administrators of the workshop saying that I'd been accepted. Wow. I don't think I came off very well in that phone call. When I'm surprised or shocked I tend to revert to a very neutral, calm, unemotional facade. Here I was, getting incredible, exciting news, and I reacted like I was being told I was due a eye appointment. Man, I'm so cool...

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was 14 years old. At 14, I'd been absolutely sure I would sell and publish a novel by the time I was 18 (ha!). Every day after school I scribbled away in pencil in my notebook, blatantly ripping off Terry Pratchett and thinking how awesome I was. Then I went to university, and other things took over, but I never stopped wanting to be a writer. Now, here was my chance.

But there was one problem. The workshop began two weeks before the end of the teacher training course I was doing, and there was absolutely no way they were going to let me leave early. (I still have issues with this: I had finished and passed all the assignments and the teaching practice, and the last two weeks had no formal classes; I'm sure we could have figured something out to make up the attendance requirements. Still.)

I decided to go to Clarion West anyway, and screw the teaching qualification. So I did.

It really was the best decision I ever made. Not only did I meet my future wife, Stephanie Burgis, there, but I learned more about being a writer than I did in all the years before or since. And two of the stories I wrote in those six weeks were subsequently published. I loved it there. I loved the writing and critiquing late into the night. I loved hanging out in people's rooms chatting and laughing and throwing ideas back and forth. I loved wandering Seattle.

I even loved the class's trip to see AI, possibly the worst SF movie I've ever seen.

Most of all, I loved my classmates and our instructors. In our very first week, we were taught by the great Octavia Butler (and she even liked my story!) Yeah, we had our tensions and our bust-ups. We ripped into each other's stories, and gritted our teeth when others ripped into ours. But despite it, we stayed friends. We went through that fire together.

Almost eleven years later, most of us are still in touch.

And today, we are launching an anthology of stories from eleven of the participants in Clarion West 2001. Best of all, right now it's free to download from Amazon!

Here's the table of contents:

Under the Needle's Eye

The Worry Doctor by Linda DeMeulemeester
Angelfall (novel excerpt from Book 1) by Susan Ee
Selling Short by Raymund Eich
Everyone Gets Scared Sometimes by Ari Goelman
Ruined Spa Day by Samantha Ling
Coyote Discovers Mars by Emily Mah
The Guy Who Worked for Money by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Everybody Stops at Boston's by Allan Rousselle
Rosamojo by Kiini Ibura Salaam
Lavender's Blue, Lavender's Green by Patrick Samphire
The Fire in Your Sky by Ibi Zoboi

The anthology was organized by the enormously energetic Emily Mah with Raymund Eich (equally energetic, no doubt, but in a much more manly way). My story is a reprint of a story that I published in Realms of Fantasy in 2005.

Download Under the Needle's Eye from Amazon.com | Download Under the Needle's Eye from Amazon.co.uk

Under the Needle's Eye is free for just two days, so go get it! Even though it's from Amazon, you don't actually need a Kindle to read it; there are free Kindle apps for computers, tablets, etc.

Here's the book trailer, again made by the I-don't-know-where-she-gets-the-energy-from Emily Mah (who also publishes as E M Tippetts; check out her books). It's pretty awesome.

The anthology cover is a joint effort by Raymund Eich and Emily Mah. 

Go get it while it's free!

Book Review: Renegade Magic, by Stephanie Burgis

The year is 1803, the place, the elegant city of Bath, and Kat Stephenson is back.

Those of you who read the first in this delightful middle-grade fantasy series will know exactly what to expect: mayhem, magic, and an utterly incorrigible heroine determined to upset just about any apple cart to protect her family and secure her older sisters the loves of their lives.

After Kat's sister, Angeline, is publicly exposed as a witch, Stepmama knows there's only one thing for it: to whisk the whole family off to Bath and get Angeline a husband before everyone in society finds out. But Angeline has already found the love of her life, even though his mother has forbidden their marriage, and if she's going to be forced to search for a different husband, then she will choose the most inappropriate prospect she can.

And if Kat doesn't have enough to do protecting Angeline from the scandalous rake she has chosen and re-uniting her with her true love, her brother Charles has gotten himself far more serious trouble, and Kat herself has been expelled from the Order of the Guardians and forbidden from using her Guardian magic.

Meanwhile, in the Roman Baths, someone is summoning the wild magic from its source below, and no one will believe Kat. Once again, Kat is the one who is going to have to save the day.

I could probably going on forever about how great the Kat, Incorrigible books are. There's adventure, magic, humor, and a wonderfully realized and accurate historical setting (if you're ever in Bath, you could easily follow Kat's trail from the Royal Crescent to the Assembly Rooms and the Pump Room and Roman Baths). But what makes this book stand out from the crowd is the characters.

There's Charles, the older brother sent down from Oxford for gambling and drunkenness, Stepmama with her utter determination to present a respectable front to the world, Papa who retreats to his books at the slightest sign of conflict, Angeline who is stubborn to the point of self-destruction, and my new favorite character, Lucy, full of absurd romantic ideas and a surprising taste for adventure. And there's Kat herself, impetuous, loyal, and ready to leap into danger with scarcely a thought.

In another author's hands, these characters could be one-dimensional, but Stephanie Burgis handles them with love and gives them a complexity that makes them effortlessly likeable. Even Stepmama is sympathetic.

I won't claim to be unbiased in this review, but if you love fantasy and adventure, or a love for Jane Austen's novels, then you won't be disappointed by this wonderful series.

Renegade Magic is out now as a hardcover in the US and Canada and as a paperback (with the title A Tangle of Magicks) in the UK.

The first book in the series, Kat, Incorrigible, is out now as paperback in the US and Canada and in the UK (with the title A Most Improper Magick).

They are also available as ebooks, of course!

Order Renegade Magic:
From Indiebound | From Barnes and Noble | From Amazon.com

Order Kat, Incorrigible:
From Indiebound | From Barnes and Noble | From Amazon.com

Announcement!

Today is the day for my very exciting (for me!) announcement:

I'm starting to offer ebook cover design services, alongside my existing web design services. I've blogged about designing covers before, and I've blogged some of my own covers, but now that I've caught up on my backlog of covers, I'm throwing open my design services to anyone who wants them!

Incidentally, here are the last couple of covers I've completed, both for re-issues of previously-published short stories by Stephanie Burgis.

(Some Girlfriends Can is available on Amazon now, and Undead Philosophy 101 will be available tomorrow; both will turn up on Smashwords and other retailers fairly soon.)

You can see more cover examples and find the full details of my service on my ebook cover design website, but in short, I'm charging $200 for an ebook cover. This gives you an eye-catching, high-resolution, optimized jpeg cover, suitable for inclusion in any ebook. 

These covers are ideal for authors re-issuing their back-catalogs and for those who are publishing independently and are looking for a professional cover.

I'm also offering ebook conversion services, and print cover design to go with your ebook. Basically, if you want it, I can do it! :)

Ebook publication news!

This post is entirely self-promotion, so feel free to skip to the next one, which hopefully will be something useful...

I have finally uploaded some of my short stories to Amazon. These are all previously published short stories (with the exception of one original), and they appeared in magazines like Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Black Static. Most of them are fantasy or dark fantasy. A couple of them are YA fantasies.

I'm really proud of these stories, and if short fantasy stories are your thing, I hope you'll enjoy them too.

Let's get down to it. Here are the stories I've uploaded:

Bone Roads

This is actually a collection of nine short stories. Eight are reprints, and one is an original. Here's the blurb:

A ghost searches for revenge in ancient Egypt.
A girl risks awakening a dark god to save her dog.
A boy unearths the bones of a dragon…

The Stories:

- When the Dragon Falls
- A Field Guide to Ugly Places
- The Frog King
- Five Things of Beauty
- Dawn, by the Light of a Barrow Fire
- The Sea Beyond Thule (Original to this collection)
- The Land of Reeds
- The Western Front
- At the Gates

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

Uncle Vernon's Lie

This short story was first published in Realms of Fantasy.

The blurb:

In Uncle Vernon’s garden, the river of stars might sweep you away. Satyrs weave tales on looms made of moonbeams. Worlds fall and die in every single teardrop. And Uncle Vernon tells stories that can’t possibly be true.

But Benji knows that his uncle will only tell him one lie in his whole life, and hidden among those stories full of secrets both frightening and wonderful is the single lie that might break Benji’s heart.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

Crab Apple

This short story was first published in Realms of Fantasy, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy.

The blurb:

"I saw her first the day I found Dad on the kitchen floor. The new girl. The wild girl..."

When Josh’s dad falls ill with lung cancer and a strange new girl appears at his school, Josh has to face up to two frightening threats. They may be more closely linked than he realizes.

It's a YA fantasy short story.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

Finisterre

This short story was first published in the much-missed The Third Alternative magazine.

The blurb:

For twenty five years, since the death of his lover, Thomas Carlyle has drifted from dead-end job to dead-end job. But when he meets a stranger on the subway, and the stranger tells him a secret, he can ignore his grief no longer.

Somewhere, no more than a pen stroke away, his past may be waiting … in Finisterre.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

Camelot

This short story was first published in Interzone.

The blurb:

Sam may only look 22, but he's spent the last 67 years searching for his brother, who was shot down over France during World War II. All he has to go on is a dream of his brother in a ruined castle, and the knowledge that his brother would never have abandoned him if their positions were reversed.

But now Sam is running out of places to look, and when he meets a strange woman, he starts to dream of things that never happened. His search is coming to its end, and somewhere, hidden, Camelot is waiting.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

At the Gates

This short story was first published in Black Static.

The blurb:

When Grace comes across a sick, stray dog in an alley, she thinks paying the vet’s bills and hiding the dog from her mother are going to be her biggest problems.

She’s wrong. Something is awakening. Something dark and old, and her problems are going to be much bigger, at the gates…

This is a YA dark fantasy story.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

A Veil, a Meal, and Dust

This short story was first published in Ideomancer.

The blurb:

The time has come for the Catechist of Yeratet to choose a new spouse. Parteeka Ren Sussu is determined that she will be the Catechist’s wife. All that stand between her and that exalted position are the other two remaining candidates.

Now all must tell their stories. Only one will be chosen. The others will die.

This is a science fiction story set in the far-future.

On amazon.com | on amazon.co.uk

You can also download the stories from various European Amazon stores. You can find the ebooks via these links:

On Amazon Germany

On Amazon France

On Amazon Italy

On Amazon Spain

Sorry, the stories are only available on Amazon right now, but I'll start converting them for Smashwords and the markets it supplies over the next few weeks.

Ebook covers

Okay, so yesterday, when I wrote my blog entry "Seven Tips for Designing an Ebook Cover", I foolishly promised that today I would post the covers that I had done so far, so that you could all jeer and shout about how I shouldn't give advice if I couldn't design... Not that any of you are that mean, of course. But feel free to think it...

I was kind of hoping that I would also get the ebooks up on Amazon today, but I'm still finishing off the last one, then I have to figure out how to upload them to Amazon (I'm new to this!), so I expect it'll happen over the weekend.

Anyway! Enough blathering. Here are the covers I've done so far. The first one is for a collection of nine of my short stories. Eight have been previously published. One is an original.

The next six are all individual short stories. (All previously published). Here are the covers:

Three of these stories (At the Gates, Finisterre and Camelot) are a little similar in terms of style, and so I've tried to brand them using the same fonts and similar styles of art.

Most of the covers use the 'find good stock art and add text' school of cover design (highly recommended!)

One of them (Crab Apple) is my attempt to design a cover without using any stock art at all. I've only used photoshop brushes and shapes to make the illustration. I can't imagine I'll do that very often, as I'm definitely not an artist.

So, that's it. Feel free to shout at me in the silence of your minds. :)

Seven Tips for Designing an Ebook Cover

It's taken me a long time to get around to it, but I've finally decided to make all of my previously published short stories available as ebooks. Yeah, yeah, I know I'm way behind on this, but at least I'm getting around to it at last.

Because I'm a designer, I decided that I would design the covers myself. (And because I'm a web designer, and because ebooks are basically web pages, with a few peculiarities and limitations, I've also decided to do all the creating of the ebooks myself, but that's a topic for another day.)

So today I thought I'd share some observations and tips about designing an ebook cover.

Your cover is a not an illustration of a scene from your book

And it doesn't have to show the characters in your book accurately.

Your book cover has two jobs:

1. To represent the type of book it is.
2. To grab the attention of a potential reader.

If it also happens to show a scene or character from the book, that's nice, but it's hardly essential. If you are designing your own cover, you're almost certainly going to be using stock art or stock photography, and the chances of finding a great photo or piece of art that also exactly fits something in your story is minimal.

Your first priority should always be to find a picture that feels like your story and which has an immediate grab-factor. Don't be too literal when searching for your stock art.

Here's an example. This is one of the covers I'm working on (I promise I won't fill this blog entry with my covers as examples!):

There is certainly no cat in this story (sorry to cat lovers!). But the illustration does represent the kind of magic in this story, and there is a scene at night with the boy and his uncle looking at the stars. It's a representative cover, not a strictly accurate one.

Avoid generic photos

It's really easy to find beautiful pictures of scenery (woodland, or impressive buildings, or stuff like that), but these rarely work as covers. They just don't jump out when a potential reader is skimming past, and they don't say anything about your book. Look for something unique and simple that stands out.

I may be tiny, but I'm still cute

Thumbnails rule the world. If you're self-publishing an ebook, you are massively reliant on your cover being noticed on an online store. That means a thumbnail image on a search screen. You're talking about something maybe 100 by 160 pixels (or smaller, on something like the 'Customers who Bought This...' section). If your cover doesn't stand out or is difficult to figure out at that size, you won't be noticed.

Traditionally published books are far less reliant on online stores. They have bookstores where their full-sized covers can be admired.

Check your cover at a width of 100px. If it doesn't work there, think again.

Don't attempt to composit multiple photos into a single image

Unless you're a Photoshop professional (and by this I mean someone who uses Photoshop to make a living, every day; using Photoshop at home or occasionally at work doesn't count), then don't attempt to make an image using multiple source photos. It will look bad, and it will be obvious.

Compositing photos, particularly if you've first had to extract part of one image from a background, is really, really hard to do well enough. Even some commercial covers suffer from bad attempts at this.

Find a single piece of art or photo that works and use that.

You need space for text

This is a mistake I made on my first few covers.

Look at any commercially-designed book cover and you'll notice one particular thing: there is plenty of space for text: the author's name, the book title, maybe quotes and a tag. The image (or the high impact part of the image, anyway), only fills part of the cover. Space has been deliberately left for the text.

Look at this cover:

There's a large white space at the bottom for the text. Or, more extreme:

Even where text is placed across an image, it should be over the least "busy" part of the image, as with this example:

Now, traditionally-published books have a big advantage: they generally commission original art or photography, or, where they use stock imagery, they generally use it to make a more complex piece. Unless you're an artist or a photoshop master, you don't really have that option. You need to use stock art, and stock art is not generally composed with book covers in mind; there is rarely space for text.

You have three options:

1. Keep looking until you find stock art that does leave space for text and fits.
2. Make room for text. Generally by extending the canvas to create space at the top or bottom (or, sometimes, the sides) as I did on my ebook cover above.
3. Put the text over the image.

This third option is almost certainly the hardest, and if the image is complex, you're going to be almost out of luck. Which brings me to:

How to do text...

There are two things that, more than anything else, make an amateur cover stand out from a professionally-designed one. The first one, as I mentioned, is a botched attempt at compositing images. The second is the way the text looks on the cover.

Text is tough to do. You wouldn't think it would be, but it is. It's probably the hardest part of any design you do. The text has to stand out and be readable, ideally even at thumbnail size, but it also needs to be an integral part of the design; it's part of the artwork itself.

The key is simplicity. If you're using photoshop, or a similar program, you will be given a whole host of ways of manipulating it. Resist!

The more effects that you add to the text, the less it will feel like it's part of the cover, and the more amateurish it will seem. 

• Flee for your life from the temptation to use satin, bevel and emboss effects.
• Be very cautious about using gradient or pattern overlays, inner glows and inner shadows.

The three effects you should familiarize yourself with are drop shadows, stroke, and outer glow. They can add life to your text without making it look like a horrible alien explosion on your cover.

But if you do use them, use them subtly. Don't go over the top. In most cases, someone giving your cover a casual glance shouldn't even notice they are there. They should be working in the background, almost invisible.

Someone Else's Fairytale uses drop shadows to help the text stand out
 from a complex image (as well as adding semi-transparent colors as
backgrounds to the text)

In many cases, though, you won't need them at all.

Black and White

It is very tempting, when you are starting out, to simply put white text on a black background (or vice versa) with no text effects. This rarely works for large text, unless you have a really excellent font. Try to avoid pure black and white together. Look for different colors, and some texture in the background, or work with outer glow to add dynamism.

Choose a good font

Most of the fonts that come packaged on your computer won't work well for book covers. Standard text fonts, like Times New Roman, aren't designed for this. There are plenty of places online where you can find good-quality, free fonts. (Try www.fontsquirrel.com, for example.)

Avoid fonts that are quirky, as well as handwriting or calligraphic fonts, unless you really know what you're doing. They are hard to work with. Look for something simple and elegant.

If all else fails, use Trajan Pro. It's clean, works beautifully at a large size, and it looks classy and professional.

Aerophilia uses Trajan Pro for its title
 (as does Someone Else's Fairytale, above).

Okay, those are my tips so far. As always, there are exceptions to every rule, and an experienced designer can ignore any or all at will.

Update: Actually, that was eight tips. I may have studied higher mathematics, but I still can't count...

If you're interested in my ebook design services, you can see my portfolio and rates on my ebook design website.

Children's books

I am, unfortunately, one of those people who reads the comment sections on newspaper websites. I know I shouldn't. I know they contain the biggest selection of trolls, bigots, crazies and snobs gathered in any one place outside of YouTube.

But I can't help myself. There they are, those comments, right a the end of the articles, and I find myself scrolling onto them again and again and being horrified and outraged (something, no doubt, the newspapers rely on to improve their advertising revenue from page impressions and time-on-page).

This week, with the news that JK Rowling was going to publish an adult novel, the snobs in particular were out in force.

There's one particular meme amongst the snobs that keeps recurring. It goes something along the lines of 'Rowling is attempting to write a "proper" book. She might have gotten away with bad writing for children, but she won't manage for adults.'

Leaving aside the ridiculous suggestion that Rowling is a bad writer (she isn't; the fact that she violates certain pre-conceived writing rules merely shows that the 'rules' are too limited), I am going to offer this defence that C.S. Lewis made in response to criticism of The Hobbit:

It must be understood that this is a children's book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery. Alice is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown-ups; The Hobbit, on the other hand, will be funniest to its youngest readers, and only years later, at its tenth or twelfth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true.

As the parent of a three-year-old, I recognise this in so many children's books. They are for children, of course, but not just for children. Adults can find something quite brilliant in them too. It's not true of all children's books, of course, but it is of many of them, and many of the best. Rowling is a writer like that, just like Tolkien was.

And those who refuse to read and appreciate them because they are 'children's books' are being no more than snobs.

10 Things Every Author’s Website Should Include

1. Who You Are

Okay, this might seem obvious. But most people who arrive at your website won’t know much about who you are or what you do. Some of them will have followed a link, others will have come via a search engine. They might not even know you’re a writer. And they might arrive at any random page on your website.

Your name and what you write on the top of every page (www.stephanieburgis.com)

Make it very clear on the top of every page who you are and what you write. Your name and either a tagline or a (very) brief intro are ideal.

2. What You’re Selling

Most authors don’t like selling. We think we’re being pushy and that we’re going to come off as arrogant. But our visitors want to know what we’re selling. They want to know about our books or stories. They’re not going to appreciate having to dig into the depths of our websites to discover them.

Let your visitors see what you’ve written and let them see what it’s about. If they’re not interested, they’ll move on, and they won’t be offended.

Highlight what you're selling (www.liahabel.com)

If you’ve got another book coming out soon, make sure you promote that too.

Highlight your next book too (www.juliejames.com)

3. An Excerpt

Not everyone goes to bookstores anymore, and not every bookstore will carry your book. If you’ve followed step 2, you’ve already got your cover and a brief description on the front page of your website, and on a page specifically about your book. Now you need to give your potential reader the chance to decide if they are actually going to like it.

Almost every publisher is happy to let you post a portion of your novel on your website (and your contract probably explicitly lets you do this). Try to post the first three chapters, but certainly put up the first chapter. Make sure you check with your publisher first, though.

Let your visitors read excerpts (www.nkjemisin.com)

Make sure the chapters are real web pages, not just PDFs or ebooks to download. It’s okay to have downloadable versions too, but most readers will want to get a taste straight away, just as they would flick through a book in the store.

4. Calls-to-Action

Eventually, you are going to want your visitors to do something, other than just leave your website. It might be as simple as giving them the chance to leave a comment or tweet a link to the book. Or it might be to buy your book. To throw in a bit of jargon, you want to offer them a ‘call-to-action’.

A ‘call to action’ can just be a link, but it’s better if you can make it really prominent so that it pops out of the page.

Clear calls-to-action (products.sitepoint.com)

Every page on your website should have some kind of call-to-action, so that your visitors don’t hit a dead end at the end of the page, and every major section of a page would benefit from one too.

5. Your Next Book

Once someone has read your book and loved it, they may visit your website to find out when your next book is due, particularly if you are writing a series. Tell them! If you don’t know the exact date, or even if you don’t yet have a cover or title, make sure you let them know there’s another book coming and roughly when.

Readers want to know what you're publishing next (www.stephenking.com)

6. A Complete, Up-to-Date List of Your Books

Number six in any list is where the author shares a vague, personal anecdote (I just made that up), so here goes. Some years ago, I was a big fan of a certain author. I read every one of his books I could find. But then no new books appeared. I checked the bookstores and the libraries, but nothing.

I looked on his website. Zilch. I was disappointed, but not surprised; these books were quirky, and they certainly weren’t bestsellers. I figured the publisher had dropped the author.

Fast-forward a few years, and I’m looking through Amazon, and I suddenly think to check up this author. I find out that not only is there a new book by this author, but the author has been publishing steadily, through a small press. I checked his website again, but still no mention of these books.

In fact, you’d probably be surprised at how many author websites are like this. It’s crazy. I would have been buying this author’s books all these years if he had listed them on his website.

Now, websites can be time-consuming. That’s why you need to be realistic when you’re building or commissioning your website about how much time you can put into it. If you commit yourself to a blog, and a news section, and videos and a vast selection of extras and you don’t have time to do it, your website will quickly become out of date.

But! At the very least, you need a page that lists your works and which is always up-to-date. If you mention publication dates and books in several places, make sure you keep a list of the locations, so that you can update everything at once. And schedule a complete review of your site a couple of times a year where you read through every page and fix what needs fixing.

7. An ‘About Me’ page

Unless you have a very good reason for needing privacy, you should always have an ‘about me’ page on your website, with a photo. If readers love a book, they want to feel like they have a connection with the author. They want to know about the author.

About the author (www.writingandsnacks.com)

Remember, though, that you need to tailor your biography to your audience. If you’re writing funny books for eight-year-olds, don’t go on about your jobs and degrees. Author Barry Eisler has an excellent article on writing your biography.

8. Cross-Linking

If you’ve got a large website, particularly if you’ve got a blog, you should make sure you cross-link to your books or stories. For example, a visitor may well have arrived at your website to read a blog post.

Your blog posts will, of course, be enough to make them interested in you and your work. So make it easy for them. Feature books and stories on every page, and cross-link from each book or story to another one. Give your readers the chance to discover all your work.

Cross-linking so readers can easily find your books (www.tobiasbuckell.com)

9. Clear, Easy-to-Read Text

If there’s one thing that writers’ website fall down on more than anything else, it is the typesetting on the page. The chances are, your website is going to have quite a bit of text on it, particularly if you’re posting extracts from your novels. That text needs to be easy to read.

This means, in almost all cases, you should have a white (or nearly white) background with dark (not pure black) text. Dark backgrounds or backgrounds with significant amounts of texture make reading text much more difficult.

There should be a reasonable amount of space between lines (for web techies among you, that usually means a line-height of 1.5 - 1.6 em), and you should use a clear, simple font (nothing too elaborate).

If your website was built more than two or three years ago, the chances are that your text is too small. Back then, most people were still using fairly low-resolution screens that sat on their desks.

But screens are changing fast. They are becoming much higher resolution, and tablets (e.g., iPads) and smart phones are becoming far more common. This means that the text on many websites is now painfully small. Sadly, even some newer websites are still being built with tiny text. Make sure yours isn’t one of them. (Again for web techies, a font-size of at least 13 or 14px is the minimum you should be aiming for with most fonts.)

Clear, easy-to-read text is absolutely essential (www.jennreese.com)

10. Contact Info

At some point, people are going to need to contact you, maybe to chat, maybe for business, maybe just to tell you how great you are. Ideally, you should have a contact form on your website, rather than an email address.

Make it easy to contact you, your agent or your publisher (www.stephanieburgis.com)

If you do have a contact form, don’t include a ‘captcha’ (one of those annoying things where you have to figure out a horribly distorted word and type it in a box). Don’t make people jump through frustrating hoops just to contact you. If you have to deal with a bit of spam, that’s a price worth paying, and there are other ways to stop spammers. (Ask your web developer how...)

If for some reason you don’t want to allow visitors to contact you, make sure you include contact details for your agent or publisher.

And a Bonus...

If you want to keep your readers simmering nicely until your next book is out, think about an ‘extras’ or bonus material section on your website. Extra chapters, background material, additional short stories, ‘making of’, games, newsletters, competitions, seasonal specials, and whatever else you can think of. You might also consider making this a members section with exclusive content, to reward people who sign up to be contacted by you. Eloisa James does this as well as any author I’ve come across.

Extras keep your fans excited between books (www.eloisajames.com)

The End, at Last...

What do you look for when you visit an author's website? What particularly good (or bad!) sites have you visited recently?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this!