Book Cover Illustrations

There’s a little confusion about how Amazon is going to be flagging typos, etc., in Kindle ebooks sold at Amazon. Some publishers and writers initially thought that minor typos, foreign words, or words not in a spellcheck might merit the same treatment as poorly edited books. However that does NOT appear to be the case. […]

Here’s a thought-provoking lecture from Chip Kidd (filmed February 2012 at a TED conference), that offers some useful tips and concepts for designing books. As he notes, designing books is no laughing matter, especially when it comes to selling books. And, as Kidd notes, “Great art can mean great sales.” However, in the case of […]

Jimm Grogan’s science fiction novel Negative Zero is now in print and available at Amazon.com. The print and iBook versions of it should be out next week. Creating the illustration for Grogan’s book was a lot of fun because one of the characters is a lot like an Earth octopus — with hair and the […]

Many authors are going the self-publishing route these days (and for many, it makes good sense). Others are going so far as to create their own small presses. The result is an explosion of new books and a wealth of quality writing for readers to choose from. As I’ve noted previously (perhaps the phrase “ad […]

Into all blogs some miscellany must fall…  So a few links to articles I suspect will be of help and interest to those working in the publishing industry — and especially authors. First, a publishing horror story — and just one more reason more and more authors are self-publishing: O’Reilly Media Has Lost Its Soul […]

What typeface is best for laying out the text in a book? Like spices, the ideal typeface for text adds a little flavor but not so much as to overwhelm. Some of the best picks are older types that have stood the test of time: Baskerville, some flavor of Garamond, or a modern version of […]

Good book layout is partly an art but mostly a craft. This is especially true of the inner pages where things have been done pretty much the same way since Gutenberg cranked out his first books. If a designer knows and applies the rules, the reward is book text that “looks right.” If the rules […]