Book Cover Illustrations

I just completed the book cover illustration for Dora Machado’s Stonewiser III, available from Mermaid Press later this year (or possibly early 2011). Machado’s first two book (which I also had the pleasure of creating book cover illustrations for) have garnered a number of awards, and everyone’s hopeful for this third book in the trilogy. […]

It is one thing to self-publish. Quite another to make money at it. Many beginners assume that if they right the book about the better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to their door. Sadly, that seldom happens. There are three things a title needs to succeed in today’s marketplace: Promotion, promotion, promotion. […]

Over the years I’ve found that sometimes, at least with artistic conundrums, the best solution is to run away. Let me explain. Sometimes in writing, illustration, or composing music, the artist manages to paint himself into a corner. The sentence that was going so well suddenly comes to a phrase that doesn’t have a good […]

From time to time beginning illustrators contact me to ask whether Photoshop or Corel Painter is the better choice for digital illustration work. I think in fact there’s no wrong choice to make. After an artist gets used to the digital “landscape” of a program and using a tablet (I recommend Wacom tablets, by the […]

Often when working on book illustrations for self-publishing authors, there will be confusion in regard to the DPI (dots per inch) needed for a picture to look good in print. The confusion comes because web pictures and most artwork designed for viewing on a computer screen will appear at 72 dpi (or, more rarely, at […]

I’ve become a publishing “old timer.” Over the years, I have played on both sides of the publishing street, starting as a small publisher in the 1980s (using a fine-dot, dot matrix to print up copy for the books, no less) which I marketed by magazine ads. This went well and laid the ground work […]

From time to time folks ask for advice about getting into the illustration business. I might not be the best person to ask since I sort of came in through the back door, starting as a writer/illustrator who could “package” his own technical books so the publisher didn’t need to hire a photographer or illustrator […]

Second opinions can be good. They can also be disastrous. When it comes to second opinions, sometimes an illustrator’s clients can be the client’s own worse enemies. That’s the reason I always shudder when I hear a client start a statement with, “I asked my [son, secretary, neighbor] what they thought about the book illustration […]

From time to time I get questions from self-publishing authors about books and ISBNs, so I thought I might address it here in my blog. The ISBN ( International Standard Book Number) was created so that books could be easily identified through computer systems worldwide. Originally made with a 10-digit number, it was later changed […]

The last couple of weeks a number of my books (and those of many other authors) have been appearing at a variety of pirate sites. Nothing new here, but still troubling given that I never see a penny from such downloads — and it is possible to see declining sales that parallel the downloading of […]