This will kick off my new Indie Publishing series where I discuss being an Indie author and what I wish I knew before I got started. This will be the first of a little multi part blog post where I discuss a few aspects of my publishing journey so far.
I went into the publishing industry green-I mean fresh sweet pea green-so of course my views were, to say at a minimum, unrealistic. Naive. Wishful thinking. You get the picture.
I was under the impression the hardest part of the process was, well, writing the book. In my opinion, although it’s not without difficulty, that is the easiest part and one I could do on repeat.
I thought all I had to do was write the book and then everything would easily fall into place and voila! I would be a famous author with royalties pouring in, a pick for Oprah’s book club, and then I could quit my job and tell the man where to stick it! While getting settled into a small cottage with a maze nestled on a lake! LOL!
None of this has come true-at least not yet-and it wasn’t until after Taming Armand was written I realized…wait, that’s not it? There’s still more to do?
Book Covers
Although one of the things I find most enjoying about the publishing process is playing such a huge part in the cover design. Thing about being an indie author is that I have the first and last say on the design-and font. This has also been the part of the process that has caused my anxiety to rear its ugly head on a few occasions.
Let’s start with you can choose anything. A blessing and a curse. Especially for someone that came into the indie publishing game with no idea of what she was doing.
After an hour or two at YouTube University, I learned a little thing about genre specific covers and genre expectations. Going into the process, I never thought about being genre-specific and whether it aligns with what’s hot in that genre at the time of publication. Naively, I thought the only goal of book cover design was to create a pretty, eye-catching cover. But the main goal as an author is to move product! You don’t want your book to get overlooked simply because the cover doesn’t fit genre expectations.
Let’s not start on the font.
Before I outsourced outsource cover design to someone that does it for a living, I gave it three attempts. It was fun, but stressful. Tedious. At times I wasn’t sure on which direction to go, and as for the urban fantasy genre in which Taming Armand and Bloody Endings both fit into with a tinge of paranormal romance, and black magic (just an FYI if you’re into that sort of thing), I thought many of the covers where cheesy.
From first glance at the covers, the books would not be my first choice. Nor did I want my cover to blend in, but I’ve learned in order to standout you have to first fit in.
Now let’s get to the nitty gritty and talk fonts! I didn’t know there were certain fonts that cannot be used because they’re trademarked or registered or whatever. But yeah, it blew my mind!
Also, there are genre specific fonts and these can make or break your cover. Just because a font is pretty doesn’t mean it’s legible. Too much flair then we have entered into romance or high fantasy territory. That’s not a bad thing, but if you write street, gritty crime- then you may find yourself in a bit of a pickle.
So my expectations for book cover design was that it would be fun. As for font design and selection, I had no expectations because it didn’t even register that thought had to be put into something, that prior to venture into publishing, I thought was insignificant, mundane.
Indie publishing has given me a new respect for publishing houses and small presses. It takes a lot of oil to get the machine that is a book ready. There are a lot of little pieces and players (if you are fortunate to have a team) working together to create the finished product waiting to be chosen on a shelf near you.
hayleymoon.com 