Writer's Haven > Writer 101 [Public]
Where do I go from here?
tha_lioness:
Ok, I've written away and finished my book. Formatted, edited cross checked and even ran a regular print and bind workout. Facing my first hurdle on what to do next, cos I as thinking of handing it out to a publisher who promised to market and advertise as well, but thanks to Timothy I know better, and saved a bunch from being wasted there. But I'm feeling swamped by the prospect of having to do everything by myself too, because time is money and I have to chip in the hours to keep my income while I drive this mission.
Long story short.. any advice on how to streamline the way forward would be greatly appreciated!
TimothyEllis:
There's a few cover artists here that do pre-mades. Go to their sites and see if you can find a cover which suits your book. A lot of them start at $10.
If not, then Google premade book covers and the genre, and keep looking until you find something.
If you intend doing the paperback, then sign up with Draft2Digital. They have a paperback formatting facility which is free to use, and the download from that can be uploaded onto KDP. You don't need to publish there to use the site. The cover for paperback is harder, but if you know some basic Photoshop skills, you can be talked through it. Whoever you get the premade from may do a paperback version for not a lot more.
If you find multiple potential covers, use the cover area here to ask for help choosing one. And even if you only find one, post the thumbnail here so people can tell you what might be wrong with it.
Use the blurb area here to ask for help writing your blurb.
Don't be in a hurry to publish. Better to find what might be wrong before you do that.
Bill Hiatt:
I haven't used it, but doesn't Amazon still have a cover generator for paperbacks (so you'd just need the ebook cover image)? If not, in the old Createspace days, Amazon used to have cover templates. Is that still a thing? I seem to recall that the spine width (the tricky part) was calculated for you.
TimothyEllis:
--- Quote from: Bill Hiatt on June 17, 2024, 09:44:49 PM ---I haven't used it, but doesn't Amazon still have a cover generator for paperbacks (so you'd just need the ebook cover image)? If not, in the old Createspace days, Amazon used to have cover templates. Is that still a thing? I seem to recall that the spine width (the tricky part) was calculated for you.
--- End quote ---
The templates are for paperbacks. You load the right one into Photoshop, and then assemble a cover over the top.
You get that after first putting it through D2D, and knowing the paper, size, and number of pages used by the pdf. That gives the right spine, and you just have to size it inside the lines.
The cover generator is very basic, and most of them are easily picked out as such. Much better to spend $10 on a pre-made in my opinion.
Bill Hiatt:
Yeah, it sounds as if premades would be a much better deal.
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