Book Cover Illustrations

Here are a few articles that may be of help to those wanting to self-publish their books: Do you want to self-publish or go with a vanity press — and what are the differences? Self-Publishing & Vanity Publishing: Confuse Them and Pay the Price Type Size and Leading, White Space and Page Color Book Design […]

I’ve done a number of book covers the last few months that were pretty straight forward and thus no stories to tell (or tall tales to make up… even the flying monkeys are stumped). So I thought I’d just list/show them here without further ado. First, the dust jacket version of P. J. O’Dwyer’s Relentless: […]

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 […]

I got word that Holly LaMora’s Finding Badger is now available in paperback and Kindle format at: Amazon.com. Billed as a “Metaphorical Journey of Transformation” the book is a very entertaining read. And you can find sample chapters at Amazon.com’s page. The only caveat is that once you start reading, you’ll likely be hooked and […]

Over the last few years, I’ve created a small booklet to give away on Halloween, devising special illustrations for it (and in one case a typeface) and doing the layout. This year has been so busy — and that’s a good thing, especially in this economy — that it’s unlikely I’ll get a new book […]

The growing number of self-published authors and small presses has been fretted over by many in the publishing industry. Their fear/argument has been that in the past big publishers acted as gatekeepers to preserve the quality of books. They rejected poorly written work and maintained the quality of books being produced — so the argument […]

A book cover illustration and layout that I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks for Dr. David Gelber’s non-fiction book Behind the Mask. The colors in the illustration were a little tricky since normally hospital surgeries are well lit in spotless white environments — which dictated either boxing a whitish picture in […]

A couple of articles for those wanting to build their own books… A nice how-to article that gives the basics of eBook publishing: Publishing an Ebook. Everything You Need to Know to Design a Book’s Interior in 5 Simple Rules is a concise look at what the essentials for creating an excellent text layout for […]

Serif typefaces are often recommended for book text because they are “easier to read. ” And for the same reason, it follows that sans serif is only suitable for headlines and such. (And by way of explanation, the expert may then impart a strange theory about how the curves of the serifs “guide the eye” […]

An artist can sometimes be an arrogant [insert noun here] to work with. Some artists seem to think that the client should have little or nothing to say in what is being done with a illustration project. Of course it is true that an artist is hired for his skill and expertise (which the client […]