Tag: Kelly Schuknecht

Book Design, Cover Design, Kelly Speaks, Uncategorized

The Book Beautiful: The Cover

While the old adage “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is one all too oft repeated, we all know that we’ve been in a bookstore and picked up a book with an author and title we weren’t familiar with simply because the cover appealed to our senses in some way. That’s not to say that the heart of the matter isn’t what happens to be inside the book; I can just as easily recall how many times I’ve put down that same book with the interesting cover after scanning a few pages and deciding it wasn’t for me.

When you’ve completed a book that you’ve poured your heart, your soul, and countless hours into, it’s important that your piece physically reflects how beautiful of an accomplishment self-publishing can be. While the traditional means for designing a book cover happened to be very time consuming and left a lot of authors underwhelmed with the result, luckily for today’s authors, we live in a digital age which makes designing a book cover more exciting and involved (especially for a self-publishing author)!

Nowadays, you can ‘pin’, ‘Like’, and ‘Share’ graphics; better yet, you can share your potential book cover ideas on social media and get feedback from potential readers. You can get readers involved and have them vote on their favorite cover, or even host a contest that allows readers to submit cover ideas of their own! But perhaps we should backpedal before we get ahead of ourselves and ask what message do want your book cover to send?

As the author, you of all people know best what audience it is you are trying to target and the essential theme your book most embodies, be it: inspiration, achievement, mystery, romance, revenge, etc. etc. Once you’ve nailed down your audience and theme, the visual metaphors that you have to work with will become more obvious.

No matter who your audience is, you want them to be excited when they see the cover of your book. You want to stop people walking by the bookstore, or walking by the bookshelf, and you want to evoke their curiosity and pique their interest. If we take a look at the covers below we will see captivating images that begin to non-verbally communicate the scope of the story the author has also artfully fabricated:

When a book cover is able to explain the scope of a book, it allows the reader to save precious time wading through the myriad of titles in libraries and bookstores.

Remember when designing a book cover that sometimes less is more. The title, your name, and a striking image are often enough. Don’t feel the need to crowd the space with over-thought or crowded typography and definitely avoid stock images that could hurt your book’s credibility.  Need I give examples of cheesy, godawful book covers? No, but I will anyway.

I won’t annotate any further, as a picture is worth a million words.

Make sure the cover of your book, no matter how many words are inside of it, has a picture that is worth all the hard work you put into it. Remember that human beings are visual creatures and that the cover of your book is an important marketing tool. Be professional, be thoughtful, but also be bold!

 

Thank you for reading!  If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com.  And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com
from the archives, Kelly Speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

From the Archives: “The Importance of Genre”

Welcome back to our Tuesday segment, where we’ll be revisiting some of our most popular posts from the last few years.  What’s stayed the same?  And what’s changed?  We’ll be updating you on the facts, and taking a new (and hopefully refreshing) angle on a few timeless classics of Self Publishing Advisor.

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[ Originally posted: March 27th, 2012 ]

The genre of your book is one of the most important decisions you will make when self-publishing. It will impact who buys and reads your book as well as how reads it.

The most important to thing to remember when choosing a genre is to not pick a genre too soon. Too often, authors set out thinking “I want to write children’s books” or “I want to write adult mystery novels,” but writing often takes on a life of its own and your book may not best fit in the genre you originally intended.

Once the book is finished, it is important to consider the audience you hope to reach. Are children your target audience? Are professionals in a certain field your audience, or do you want your book to appeal to a wide, general audience? A narrow genre can limit the readers who find your book. This is one of the few cases where general can be better.

Finally, think about how readers will find your book. Will they primarily search online, or will they visit a  bookstore? If your readers will be searching online, consider keywords when choosing a genre. This will ensure that your book shows up in the search results.

If you are still unsure about the genre of your book, talk to other writers and people who work in the publishing and book distribution industry. Visit your local bookstores to look at the titles in your genre and talk to the sales people. Seeing and hearing what other writers are doing and what readers are buying can help make this difficult decision easier.

– by Cheri Breeding

Genre is an important element of your book, before and during and after the publication process–but I must (politely) take a different tack from the one that Cheri Breeding took back in 2012.  In my personal (and somewhat expert) opinion, an author–particularly a self-publishing author–shouldn’t think about genre at all until after the manuscript is completely written.  I’m not saying that if you have a project underway you should intentionally scrub all thought of genre from your mind, but I am saying that your novel or book of poems or illustrated children’s book should be written the way it demands to be written, and those demands evolve over time as the characters and plot take on life of their own.  A book should not be written as a slave to notions of genre and all the expectations that go along with those notions.

genre book covers

The true importance of genre comes into play after the manuscript is written.  At that point, yes, you can take genre under consideration in reshaping whatever needs to be reshaped in order to reach masterful perfection–if you want, if that proves helpful to you–and you can take notes from the authors you admire whose works exert influence upon your source of inspiration.  But the best part is when the manuscript is done being a manuscript and has become a book you’re willing to send out into the world, because the best part happens when you start crafting something else entirely: your marketing strategy.

Genre is one of the most important discovery tools out there for authors of all stripes and colors.  In terms of importance, it’s right up there with personal recommendations and an attractive book cover–and even the most attractive of book covers doesn’t do much for sales if it doesn’t represent the tone and content of the book, giving hints and clues as to what the reader will find there.  And that’s … kind of the same wheelhouse as genre, isn’t it?   Genre is so fundamental to book discoverability that booksellers and watchdogs don’t just break down how many people buy books because of genre, but how many people buy books because of a highly specific genre–whether that’s science fiction, fantasy, romance, nonfiction, crime fiction, or any other of a number of genres available for discussion.

You can put genre to work in the marketing process first and foremost by ensuring that your marketing strategy lines up with your book’s genre–or genres.  Hybrid and cross-genre works are gaining ground in a crowded marketplace looking for fresh approaches to literature, so don’t be afraid to embrace the multi-dimensionality of your work–you just might have to use language that touches on the buzzwords of both categories in your promotional blog posts, tweets, and metadata.  And regardless of the genre of the book you’re publishing, you need to employ the language of genre in pretty much every scrap of promotion you put together.  Whether it’s in an on-air interview or in a press release or in the description you upload with your book trailer to YouTube, genre is your ally.  The more you talk about it, the more your book will turn up in the discussions–and indexed search results on Google and Bing–and that’s good news both for you and for your readers.

Never dismiss the importance of genre!  Just … don’t let your work be defined by it.  Your book enriches its genre, and informed the dimensions of what its genre or genres will be defined by in the future.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Drop me a line in the comments section below and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.  ♠

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com

 

Kelly Speaks, news from the self publishing world, self publishing news, Uncategorized

Self-Publishing News: 8.8.2016

And now for the news!

This week in the world of self-publishing:

The title really says it all, in this case: says Alison Flood in The Guardian on August 5th, “A father who tried self-publishing the bedtime story he made up for his daughters has landed a surprise order of 2,000 copies from Virgin Atlantic to help children sleep on night flights.”  The book in question, Stephen Holmes’ The Great Hot Air Balloon Adventure (illustrated by Kev Payne), was inspired by a bedtime story Holmes had been telling his daughters for years–and he never had the intent to publish or sell until Madison, age seven, requested it. The story of how his book connected with Virgin Atlantic is an interesting one: having ordered an intial print run of 1000 copies and having sold roughly half that number, Holmes decided to send a copy to an airline executive via LinkedIn as a spur-of-the-moment inspiration–and the airline enjoyed it so much they decided to order an additional print run of 2000 in order to distribute copies on their night flights. The book, according to Flood, “tells of best friends Tom and Jessica–the names chosen by his daughters – who are taken on a night balloon ride by a ‘very well spoken’ rabbit. They drink hot chocolate and bounce on clouds, before meeting a friendly owl and flying home to bed.”  The icing on the cake?  Flood gives a brief run-down at the end of her article on the progress self-publishing has made in recent years.

“It’s the best choice for self publishers to publish their magazines easily and quickly without any delay,” writes Veronica Linn in this August 5th piece for WhaTech.  FlipHTML5, once voted the “best magazine newsstand app maker by users around the world,” gives publishers “the chance to create realistic CSS3, jQuery and HTML E-magazines from PDF versions instantly which they are distribute through online or offline outlets.” This is good news for self-publishing authors, who often need to capitalize upon timeliness in order to turn a profit.  Says Linn, “All one has to do is to upload the input material, insert personal logo and multimedia content and change themes and backgrounds to achieve the look they want.”  It’s worth noting that Linn, who as an employee of FlipHTML5, is not exactly unbiased in the service of self-publishing–but in many ways her piece hits all of the right notes.  To read the full release, click here!

“More than half of all science fiction magazines failed to publish fiction from black authors in 2015,” writes Andrew Liptak for The Verge on August 4th: “Speculative fiction magazine Fireside Fiction has commissioned and released a report detailing an unwelcome revelation: speculative fiction magazines and online fiction sites are failing to publish stories by black writers.”  Liptak reports on the report, calling it “damning” and that “of the 2,039 short stories published last year across 63 magazines, only 38 were published by black authors.”  These stats are fairly self-evident, indeed, but what do they have to do with self-publishing?  It all has to do with the part short stories have to play in boosting the science fiction genre.  Says Liptak, “Short fiction also allows authors to experiment with form, style, and narratives which can have great impact on the field as a whole. Barriers for specific groups of people hurts the field as a whole by blocking new voices and styles from reaching a wider audience.”  Liptak excerpts an interview with author N.K. Jemisin (author of The Fifth Season and Obelisk Gate), who “noted that some authors that might have otherwise published through traditional markets have found other outlets for their work.”  Says Jemisin (through Liptak), “There’s a gigantic market of self-published and small press published black fiction that kind of eschews the whole traditional published market simply because back in the nineties when all of this really kind of kicked off … the traditional publishing industry basically treated black writers as if they were anomalies.”  So in other words, self-publishing is promoting diversity in a highly structured and often exclusionary genre.  That’s good work, self-publishers!  To read the full Verge article, follow the link.

spa-news

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry. This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

Kelly

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com

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Book Design, Kelly Speaks, Uncategorized

The Book Beautiful

You’ve heard it all before: people aren’t morally opposed to reading self-published works, but they are aesthetically opposed to reading books of substandard appearance and physical quality–which they often equate with the same thing.

But here’s a fact: to self-publish doesn’t mean you’re accepting a lesser standard of quality, and to read self-published books isn’t to lower some standard out of pity or poor taste.  Many self-published books are already beautiful.  Did anyone see Andy Weir’s original cover for The Martian?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Or how about Christopher Paolini’s covers for Eragon and its sequels?  Those are sometimes said to have helped reshape Young Adult fantasy book covers for the last decade.  And what’s true for the outside of a book is true for the inside, too.  A self-published book can’t automatically be said to have substandard interior design, with faulty formatting and messy editing.  And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think we can even pass this off as a “well, we’ve just gotten better at it with so much practice!” sort of situation.

The truth of the matter is, there is and always has been a powerful stigma to self-publishing, a stigma so ubiquitous and so powerful that it has warped our perception of reality to the extent that even actual self-publishing authors sometimes believe they’re choosing something second-rate, that going indie is a fallback after failure to reach actual success (often equated with traditional publishing).  And while many people do come to self-publishing after doing other things first, that’s beside the point.  The self-publishing world is an inclusive one, where maybe we can begin to heal some of the systemic hurts enforced and policed by traditional publishing.

There have ALWAYS been many beautiful self-published books, just as there have always been some that are less beautiful.  But the same goes for traditionally published books; just because one of the Big Five publishers takes you on doesn’t mean they actually care about the quality of your book’s design, production, and manufacture.  They can more than make up for letting a few books fall through the cracks by pushing sales for next year’s blockbuster success story.  In the world of self-publishing, however, every book matters–no matter its genre, its author’s point of origin, or how much money has been poured into its creation.  If it’s an interesting concept, with an eye-catching cover, readers will show up for it.

A book’s appearance matters.  Its author matters.  Its content matters.

Its publisher, ultimately, doesn’t.

So, over the coming weeks, we’re going to spend some time looking at what makes a book beautiful–and how a book’s appeal can be turned into a currency of its own, something useful to the author’s bank account.  And of course we will dedicate page space each week to talking about how to coax out just a little bit more of that beauty with each facet of a book’s design.

book art

 

Thank you for reading!  If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line atselfpublishingadvice@gmail.com.  And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings from one indie, hybrid, and self-published author to another. ♠

KellyABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com. 10:00 AM
Advocacy in Self-Publishing, from the archives, Kelly Speaks, Uncategorized

From the Archives: “Vanity Verses Self-Publishing”

Welcome back to our Tuesday segment, where we’ll be revisiting some of our most popular posts from the last few years.  What’s stayed the same?  And what’s changed?  We’ll be updating you on the facts, and taking a new (and hopefully refreshing) angle on a few timeless classics of Self Publishing Advisor.

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[ Originally posted: October 24th, 2008 ]

The self-publishing author community is becoming increasingly educated in options available, naturally comes in part as the by-product of approaching sound resources and asking good questions.

One question I do see stumbling around from time to time is some form of this, “Isn’t self-publishing the same as Vanity publishing?”

The answer: not really at all…

Vanity Presses often very dubiously attempt to present themselves as small presses, similar to ‘traditional’ publishers. They do this by claiming to be selective in terms of content. But those rejection rates are very low – generally reserved only for those manuscripts containing things like libel or pornography. But vanity presses do not otherwise screen for quality. They publish anyone who can pay, but don’t disclose that until well into the publishing process. Often, those fees are hidden in obscure production services unrelated to design, materials, or binding. That is where these operations ultimately make their money – charging authors book printing costs only to sell right back to authors.

The good news is that quality self-publishers are available with open, upfront, book production, distribution, and marketing options. And once books are professionally published copies are available where readers actually buy books. Unlimited printed copies are availabe for retailers and wholesalers on-demand, without additional out-of-pocket printing costs.

Keep writing.

– by Karl Schroeder

You may be wondering why today, of all days, I choose to return us to the argument over vanity presses vs. self-publishing, but if you glance back at yesterday’s news you’ll notice mention of Samita Sarkar’s July 28th Huffington Post article, in which she deconstructs Globe and Mail Books Editor Mark Medley’s mission to cast shade at the work of Canadian author Douglas Gardham earlier in the month.  Gardham, who made his mark by hand-selling books on long cross-country tours, symbolizes everything despicable and pitiable in the self-publishing world–according to Medley, that is.  Sarkar comes to Gardham’s defense, and in so doing works hard to redefine the boundaries between vanity presses and self-publishing (a distinction that Medley is more than happy to blur for the sake of an easy character smear).

Sarkar defines vanity presses and self-publishing narrowly:

There is a difference between publishing with a vanity press or so-called “self-publishing service” and true self-publishing. True self-publishing means being the owner of your own ISBN. Self-publishers register their ISBN under their own publishing imprint, or their own name. They hire independent editors and cover designers, and upload their manuscripts directly to bookseller websites, such as Amazon, Smashwords, and iTunes. Self-publishers maintain maximum creative control over their work, and receive much higher profits from sales.

Unlike true self-publishing, if the author uses a vanity press, the publisher will remain the owner of the book’s ISBN. The author will also have to pay hefty upfront fees for the book’s production, and to top it all off, authors will receive low royalty rates even though the publisher has not invested in the book whatsoever. This backwards business model is how vanity presses make their money. This is why vanity presses aren’t picky; so long as it’s not hate speech or pornography, anything goes.

Whereas traditional publishers pay authors for the rights to their book and consider the readers to be their customers, and self-published authors also consider the readers to be their customers, vanity press customers are authors, not readers. I have yet to meet an author that has turned a profit from publishing with a vanity press. There are very few exceptions.

And in many ways, I agree with Sarkar–if not exactly  in point, than in the general direction of her argument.  I still align with what Karl first wrote for us eight years ago–vanity presses are the realm of personal ego thinly disguised as corporate profit. Vanity presses give their authors a little, but take a lot–in terms of creative control and royalties, and that’s how you can recognize them.  And self-publishing companies take a little (usually a percentage of profits) while leaving the rest entirely to the author’s discretion.

Really, the most glaring mistake that Sarkar makes is the omission of hybrid publishing companies, a subject we’ve discussed before.  The lines are far more blurred even than Medley knows–but not between vanity presses, which are straight up scams that almost always trap authors in stasis.  The blurring is between self-publishing and hybrid publishing–and the distinction between these terms would be better described as a spectrum, with bare-bones self-publishing experiences like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing at one end, and more fully fleshed-out hybrid publishing service providers like Outskirts Press at the other end.  (And OP just updated its website this week!)

You can easily tell the difference between a vanity press and a hybrid publishing company, as I mentioned, by the royalties and creative control.  With a hybrid publishing company like Outskirts, you own your ISBN and while you have the option of paying for cover design (if you’re not comfortable designing one yourself) you can just as easily choose to be your own designer and forego the cost.  This is how hybrid publishing companies work: you choose which services you need and pay for those, and you own whatever is produced by those paid services.  The object of Sarker’s dislike (vanity presses) is correct, but her reasoning (there’s no room for a middle-man in self-publishing) is an extreme position, if not downright incorrect.

Not every person has the time or the skills to create a beautifully produced, polished, designed, and edited masterpiece.  But that doesn’t mean that such a person has no story worth telling or self-publishing.  It just means they need a conscientious and ethical way of paying for the services they didn’t come built in with at birth, and they can find these services at a hybrid publishing company.

Thanks for reading.  If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.  Drop me a line in the comments section below and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.  ♠

KellyABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.