Book Cover Illustrations

I’ve created two graphic novels of sorts (Witches and Fish and The Raven — both available from Amazon.com as well as the artwork for the Werewolves of New Idria written by John Chadwell). However, while these three books meet the requirements of being sequential, telling a story, and being supported by artwork, aren’t in the […]

For many self-publishing authors, sales have tanked due to the huge number of authors, and the fact that many are giving away their products to get a higher “sales” position (arguably 50 percent of zero is zero). One way many authors have employed to get their books above the maddening crowd of mediocre, self published […]

Yes, there are scam artists out their, preying on authors. And the terrible thing is that some of the major publishing houses are now running a few of them. Here’s a good round up of “publishers” that are best avoided: The Author Exploitation Business. And a look at how some Literary Agents Have Sold Out […]

The paperback version of my science fiction novel Lesser Gods is now available, with additional artwork not found in the ebook version — and more interesting typefaces and layout. (Yes, eBooks are nice and handy to read, but print still can be a bit more refined if not prettier.) Many of my clients have been […]

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 […]

Sometimes if you look at the numbers, the prospects for making money in any given business may seem bleak. And yet… Even in the poorest of industries, there are often people making money hand-over-fist while everyone is claiming such things are impossible. Certainly this is the case today with the publishing industry. When you look […]

Some time ago my author friend Karen S. Elliott had some questions that led to some answers that might be of help to other writers needing a book cover. She asked, “What could writers do to make your job easier? Better description of what they want? Do they even know what they want? What’s the […]

I’m slowly wrapping up what proved to be a huge book project: Illustrating and laying out Steve Quayle’s Angel Wars. Rather than creating only the cover illustration for the book (as is my normal assignment with book projects), I also did the graphic design and layout of the cover and all the inner pages as […]

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 […]

Dr. David Gelber sent word that his book Behind the Mask: The Mystique of Surgery and the Surgeons Who Perform Them is now available at Amazon.com. Normally operating rooms are brightly light, so things were a little tricky with this cover because the central figure tended to get lost in the background. Finally I hit […]