Tag Archives: graphic design

Studying poster design to help your covers

Skilled Workman Posted on by

CREATIVE PRO HAS AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE TODAY on poster design. I mention this because authors without the trained eye of the designer make embarrassing design mistakes because this knowledge is not part of their understanding. Self-publishers must train their eyes Books like Ellen’s shown above are a real help as you expand your knowledge beyond the narrow confines of writing and editing. What writers are normally not aware of is the constant visual input which is the … Continue reading →

New version of InDesign CC 2015.2 released today!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Click on the image to find links to download the free trial, buy a subscription, or whatever. This is always a big day for me. I’ve been working getting ready for the changes, so I can help you with any questions. Again, this go-round, there’s not much for book production. OpenType and Glyph Features There are new features to help with OpenType glyph choices. They are available from the Font Menu, from contextual menus when selecting characters [right-click], and there’s … Continue reading →

Pictures on Kindle remains a crap shoot

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I don’t do this as often as I should (read other people’s books on self-publishing). It’s not because I don’t think they have good things to offer. Mainly it’s the result of a reasoning and a fact. First, I don’t want to accidentally plagiarize someone while writing. So, I tend to keep others’ writing out of the memory banks. Second, most non-fiction on book publishing is far too expensive for my little budget. But I picked up a copy … Continue reading →

New free images from Getty

Skilled Workman Posted on by

As you know, most of the free image resources are not worth the time to look through them. The Getty Search Gateway has a huge quantity of images. Getty’s new offering is better than most, because it is well catalogued with a good search engine. Careful! You can waste a lot of time…

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Curation: a main focus of your blog

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Book business has a good article today entitled: Are content curators becoming more important than content creators? In many ways they are, especially in niches for non-fiction. For example, on my companion blog, Reality Calling, it’s main purpose has become the curation of Christian speculative fiction. These books are hard to find because the major book sites like Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo have no way to effectively search for them. So, my constant book reviews provide a way for … Continue reading →

Cover Design: The seduction of type effects

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Amateur covers are obvious! The number one mistake is made by adding all kinds of fancy trimmings to your type. Not only does it make the type much harder to read, but all trained designers have been strongly told that NO ONE EVER does that. As a result, there are very few professional covers with type stylized like that. If it is, the type is carefully embossed, maybe beveled. Using the minimal amount necessary to get the … Continue reading →

New Release! “How Do I Make The Next Book Better?”

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is the plaintive question I get every time after I have set up, formatted, and uploaded a book for a new author. It is also one of the most common questions I see while socially networking. Buy $2.99: How Do I Make The Next Book Better? There are three basic underlying concepts 1: Producing a print version of your book 2: Dealing with the size of your production budget 3: Producing a manuscript which can be easily … Continue reading →

How can I make the next book better?

Skilled Workman Posted on by

How can I make it better the next time? This is the plaintive question I get every time after I have set up, formatted, and uploaded a book for a new author. It is also one of the most common questions I see in the FaceBook and Linked-In groups, Google+ communities, and specialized author forums in which I spend time. It is coupled with the question, “How can I get the print version set up?” There are … Continue reading →

The Book Designer’s Book Typography and Fonts package

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Make your book professional with the Contenu/Buddy production group Self Publisher Book Typography & 16 Fonts Only $49.99 or 12 Radiqx house fonts for book design Only $29.99 For self publishers the conversion from Word to InDesign is a huge leap. The goal is a professional look to their book designs, but immediately the problems of typography raise their head. In Word that is not so much of an issue because the typography controls in Word are … Continue reading →

Typography does not start with font design

Skilled Workman Posted on by

This is the first major confusion in typography. Many believe that typography is font choices. They spend a huge amount of time on which fonts to choose, how fonts developed historically, and the reader reactions to these fonts. This indeed is a good portion of typography, but this pursuit misses the entire point. The point of typography is to use words to communicate. Font choices can help—but this is really a small portion of what we need … Continue reading →