Create A Snazzy Cover

When you publish an ebook you're going to need a cover.

I like pretty girls and I won't balk at buying a book with a pretty girl on the cover. Obviously, I'm not into Regency Romance novels, but if I were I'd be on the lookout for books with a pretty boy on the cover--some dashing Captain back from the war in a pirate shirt. Maybe holding a sword and looking swashbuckling.

And a girl holding a sword looking swashbuckling is appealing, too. I'm not trying to be a sexist jerk here. I'm just saying that your ebook will have a market and that market will respond to the cover of your book.

Sex sells. If you are gnashing your teeth at the intimation that an attractive female might be reduced to an object of commerce, you might take comfort that attractive males can be so objectified, too. And this is the problem with using sex to sell: you can easily offend unawares or unintentionally. Tread tastefully.

If you are a closet Rembrandt, then all you need do is dash off a pleasing study of your main character doing something interesting--hopefully with a gun or swashbuckling. Sadly, I am not a closet Rembrandt, or Picasso, or anybody else. My art is best pinned on refrigerators with little magnets.

With this in mind I set about finding an artist. Here's what I did and it has worked out quite well for me: I went to Google image search and put in "steampunk" because I was looking to publish a Sherlock Holmes story. I confined the search to deviantart.com. After paging through a few hundred images, I found one I liked. Then I looked at the artist's portfolio and liked what I saw. (I recommend you look for a particular "style" that you find agreeable.)

A few moments later I emailed Joanne Renaud asking if she might do the cover art for The Aristotelian. She would and she quoted a price I found fair. We drew up a simple contract to do the art and get paid. PayPal provided a satisfactory conduit for payment. Joanne and I live in different states, but we were able to make effective use of email, facebook & twitter to convey my vision to her and to get back drafts.

Your publishing project may include a different mix of specialists, and you should learn to work effectively with each business partner. I recommend that you keep the questions "what" and "how" clear in your mind. You own the "what" and your specialist owns the "how."

I regard Joanne as a business partner and I value her opinions about artsy stuff. I would propose ideas and ask if they worked artistically. I had a devil of a time describing what a Lasanian skycycle looked like and I ended up googling images and saying "like this, but elliptical." I suppose that had we been able to share sketches on the back of a napkin, it might have gone faster.

You should learn to do rough sketches and storyboards. More on that later...

It is important to share a clear vision of what you want to the cover to look like. I recommend going through bookstores and finding the covers that jump out at you. I suggest standing about 20 feet away from a shelf of books and then look at their covers. If they pop out visually, consider something like them. Then go to Amazon, where most people will be making the buying-decision for your book, and look at what works for you. And understand why it works for you.

I devised a sort of "grammar" of what the big-money book designers are doing and I tried to implement something like that in Finding Time. In the case above, I took inspiration from both Sarah Hoyt's Darkship Thieves and also Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

Ender's Game is an interesting book-cover-study. Do a Google image search on the cover. You'll see how cover design has evolved in the last three decades. The cool, angular space ships and funky typefaces of the '80s have been replaced with something that's more personal and more iconic.

You'll want to think a bit about your cover lettering. It should mesh with your story. I picked a Trajan typeface for Finding Time because it was more "timeless" and I used an Algerian typeface for The Aristotelian because it was more "Victorian."

But don't do what I tell you, do what you think works for you.
(You can find the bullet-point outline of How To Publish An Ebook here.)

How To Publish An Ebook

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine at writers' group asked about publishing an ebook. Since I've published The Aristotelian and also Finding Time, I've worked out a workflow for ebook creation. Last summer I gave a presentation at Bar Camp Grand Rapids and that was well received.

I did not use a fancy Power Point or Prezi presentation--just a text file zoomed up and projected on the screen. This is what it said:

1) Write a book. Use Word, or Emacs. If you use vi, you can't. Just quit...
2) Convert DOCX to HTML using Rick Boatright's script
3) Copy HTML into Sigil.
4) Create a snazzy cover with a pretty girl.
5) Open someone else's ebook in Sigil to see how they did it
6) Convert ePub to Mobi using Calibre.
7) Go to the County clerk and register a DBA, e.g. Atlas Integrated Publishing
8) Buy an ISBN or 10 ISBNs
9) Create an account on Kindle Direct Publishing
10) From your Bookshelf add a new title
11) Wait 12 hours for notification from Amazon.
12) After you sell 100 books, look into CreateSpace
13) Build a web page for your book
14) Create a snazzy book trailer
15) Create marketing pieces. Like bookmarks or business cards

About a week later, another friend, Matt Heusser, wrote this summary of my talk. I should apologize for step #4, because a snazzy cover may also have a pretty guy, or a pretty guy and girl. Or a puppy.

Coming back to now, my friend wanted this done for his book. I told him that the first thing he has to do (mindful of the above), is to decide what you want to do and what you want to hire out. I feel pretty handy with the geeky stuff and I feel pretty lame with the artsy stuff. That's why I hired my friend Joanne Renaud to do the artwork. And my friend Kemp Lyons to do the book trailer.

In both cases I was able to take delivery of content online and I was able to pay via PayPal. We're all still talking to one another, and I'll gladly do business with each of them again. I'll call that success. The more you can iron out up front, the less risk of hard feelings later. It's not reasonable to expect the other person to read your mind. Both of you should expect a bit of to-and-fro while you're converging on a solution. I hope to expand on this later.

More About Mr. Perfect

I've blogged about avoiding superlatives, and beaten up that nice Mr. Mike Smith about his superlative protagonist.

Just now I found something that underscores what I'm talking about. Here's a link to an article about things overachievers do. It gets depressing at the end when it says they don't write books. Sigh.

The point I derived from this article is that if you're really, really good at X, then you'll be less good at A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, and Z. If that was tedious to read, it was tedious to write. And now imagine that instead of just reading each letter, you were getting a Ph. D. in it? Sounds unrealistic? It should.

If your dashing knight is the best swordsman in the world, then s/he's got no time after swords practice for mastering the violin, or piloting a star fighter, or figuring out how to romance members of the appropriate sex?

If you see any of my ebooks, you'll see the art of Joanne Renaud. We've become friends because I am not an artist. She is. I've hired her to do art for my books. She's good. Yet she reminded me of something that weirded me out some years ago. Did I say I'm not an artist? Keep that in mind.

My sister was cleaning out some of the papers from my dad's house. And some of my teenaged papers were mixed up in them. She sorted them out, and returned them. I saw some landscapes and a picture of a superhero with a jet pack and ray gun.

"Who drew these?" I asked.

"You did," she replied.

I could not imagine any time at which I had been interested in doing something like that. I could not remember making those pictures. They were completely unfamiliar to me. I'm not an artist.

This bothered me a bit and I racked my brain about how these drawings had come to be. Over the course of a couple days I remembered having some time on my hands immediately after graduating from High School and before I started working in my full-time job. In the summer of 1973 I wasn't an artist. I wasn't anything. Just a kid who'd finished school with pretty good grades and a diploma from Kent City High School (The worst high school in Kent County, Michigan back then. I was told.)

In the decades afterwards, I've applied myself to studying Mathematics, Computer Science and Software Engineering. Then I applied myself to writing and storytelling so that my artistic expression is seen in my writing. Not the graphic or visual arts.

Who I am is informed by these activities. The culture of the geeks I ran with helped form my values and attitudes. When I ran into artists in my various writing groups, making purdy pitchers was something they did, not me. Thus my shock and denial that I had dabbled in producing something I was now interested in only as an observer and consumer. This is sort of the inverse of my blog post about reading like a writer.

I'm not anything special and where I aspire to be special, I relate less well to the book-buying public.

I once wrote a writing mantra about making your protagonist someone you'd want to get on the train with. And that means your protagonist has to be someone normal humans can relate to at some level. Stan Lee does this when he makes Peter Parker an awkward high school student. C. S. Forester does this when he lets that nice Mister Midshipman Horatio Hornblower get beat up for doing something right. 

Look again at what those overachievers do: they trim away parts of their life that are unrelated to their goals.

Overachievers are unbalanced characters.

An overachiever in X will be an underachiever in something else. To make your characters believable they must be in this sense realistic. Maybe your ninja is the best swordsman in all Japan, but he sucks at marketing and promotion.

Think about your characters' strengths, and now imagine a list of everything that remains. Regard those things as weaknesses. Sherlock Holmes was an embarrassment to his family when John Watson disclosed he was a flat-earther. Just ask Mycroft.

A Question of Time

This is a review of A Question of Time (AQOT), a novel by Joanne Renaud.

AQOT is a time-travel romance that takes the protagonist, a successful SF writer, back in time to the 1980s. I don't read a lot of romances, but I know a fair bit about time travel stories as you can read about here. So, if it seems I'm more in touch with H. G. Wells, than Barbara Cartland, don't be surprised.

I should start with another disclaimer. I know Joanne because she illustrates for my story The Aristotelian and my anthology Finding Time. So I'm biased, but I won't lie. I happen to know a little bit about the '80s since I was a callow youth at the time fresh out of graduate school with a nifty gubmint job as a Cryptologic mathematician living in Laurel, Maryland.

This is an interesting coincidence because AQOT really starts when the protagonist goes spinning out of control on a rain-slicked highway and finds herself in outside a library in 1980s Maryland. Since I used to haunt the Laurel Public Library in the '80s, I felt right at home.

The protagonist, is a 30-something girl named Ceci, who still carries a torch for Alan, her high school writing teacher. Not that they ever were romantically entangled when she was a kid, but that she admired the guy, sought his approval and felt horrid when she showed up for class on Monday morning to learn he'd tragically died in a car wreck.

As you may expect, the library in Maryland where Ceci time-travels to just happens to be where the not-yet-dead teacher is borrowing a book. She doesn't quite believe she's traveled in time and so she is quite forward with the fellow, because she thinks him to be a fig-newton of her imagination.

This works out well and a whirlwind romance ensues. Nevertheless, the fact that the fellow died in a car accident haunts the narrative like a dark cloud.

Since both Ceci and Alan share an interest in writing and science fiction, their pillow talk entails plots they have in mind for stories they intend to write, and as well as Dan Simmons's Hyperion series that she's read, but he hasn't because it hasn't been finished yet.

One complaint I had was that for Science Fiction writers, they were bit a slow to consider time travel as a possible explanation for their experiences. Granted, the circumstances of the time-travel were more like those of Somewhere In Time than Back To The Future. It's a pet peeve of mine when being in denial of time-travel occupies a protagonist for more than a few pages. If you warp ME back to 1989, I'm going to spend about 30 seconds in denial. Then a millisecond later, I'm going to be buying Apple and Microsoft stock. I think Alan could have figured out the mysterious woman he took home was from the future based on the various slips she makes.

I thought Ceci and Alan were believable and likeable characters I enjoyed spending an evening with. The story brought back memories of the '80s. And that's where Joanne Renaud really shined, she caught the atmosphere/spirit of the '80s spot-on. I felt I was transported back to those days. (That computer on the left isn't the H-89 I owned back in 1989, but it's close.)

I'm pleased to give A Question of Time a 5 star review.

Sherlock Holmes before he was famous

Katherine Tomlinson at Dark Valentine magazine has graciously consented to let me cross-post this interview.

Sherlock Holmes as a teenager; his brother Mycroft called home to talk him out of his new hobbies…

Victorian adventure ensues in Steve Poling’s new story The Aristotelian (with cover by our own Joanne Renaud). Available for 99 cents at Amazon.com, the book is the first in a planned series.

Steve Poling stopped by Dark Valentine to tell us a little about the book and what he has planned for the Holmes boys.

DV: The Aristotelian is an engaging romp. How long did it take you to take to write it?

SP: Thank you. It came together over a couple months in fits and starts. I had lost interest in writing, and wrote it as an exercise to get back in touch with what I loved reading most. I’d always thought Mycroft’s supposed laziness a cover for something else that Watson never knew and Sherlock only suspected. For instance, the metal filings on Mycroft’s sleeve is not indicative of locksmithing.

A singular character such as Sherlock Holmes must have had a singular family life growing up. It was a joy exploring it.

DV: I love that Mycroft tells the story. Why his point of view?

SP: Because I studied mathematics in school and minored in philosophy, I identify more with Mycroft or their father than I do with Sherlock. I take a perverse pleasure showing a formidable, yet immature, Sherlock Holmes getting in trouble.

DV: In fact, why Sherlock? Are you a longtime Conan Doyle fan?

SP: I’ve liked the Sherlock Holmes stories since I was a youth. I like pretty much everything I’ve read of Conan Doyle, but particularly his Holmes stories.

DV: What kind of research did you do to make the period come alive?

SP: I’ve been interested in the Victorian era ever since I started reading steampunk. Obviously, reading period literature is a big deal. I have three shoe boxes of photographs passed down through the family. The oldest are the most interesting. And Dr. Google has been very helpful in answering the questions that came to mind. I had the great good fortune to visit the Sherlock Holmes museum last summer, and that gave me a feel for the neighborhood of 221b Baker Street.

DV: Our colleague Joanne Renaud did the cover. How did you find her artwork?

SP: The credit belongs to Dr. Google. An image search string for “steampunk” restricted to the deviantart.com site yielded a number of delightful images, the best of which was done by Joanne. I was pleased when she consented to do the cover for my story.

DV: Will there be more adventures in this series?

SP: Yes. The Aristotelian is Mycroft’s application to the Diogenes Club.

Circumstances did not allow him to submit this application to the Duke of Denver until several years after the events described therein. I am in the midst of writing Steamship to Kashmir, Mycroft’s first adventure as a member of that institution. I anticipate that the archives of the Diogenes Club hold records of additional adventures by Mycroft and other members as well. For instance, I hear rumors that the missing volumes of Lewis Carroll’s diaries are stored there.

DV: Who are the authors you enjoy reading?

SP: I go through phases with different authors, and serially obsess thereon.

It depends on the genre. For starters… Dorothy Sayers, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Michael Connelly for their mysteries. And John Scalzi, H. Beam Piper, and Jerry Pournelle for their SF.

DV: What’s next for you?

SP: I am writing the find99centbooks.com manifesto. This web site will enable readers to find the best ebooks in their price range and provide links to purchase them. It will also enable authors or publishers to promote their works, and enable reviewers to sort the wheat from the chaff. It also hopes to bring together editors and illustrators with authors before publication, and enable readers to note typos in ebooks after publication. Technology is disintermediating traditional publishing. In so doing, traditional tasks of rating works and editing them are not being done–find99centbooks.com hopes to crowd-source these tasks.

In short, I’m trying to save civilization.