Indie Publishing Teams: Who to Include

We’ve talked about the fact that indie publishing is a business. And you know that if you’re serious about selling a top notch book you can’t go it alone. That’s where your indie publishing team comes into play. As a true indie publisher (rather than just a small publishing company with in-house staff), you’ll most likely work with independent contractors.

There are benefits to this:

• You don’t have to worry about long-term hiring, withholding income tax, or paying worker’s compensation insurance.
• You can handpick the best contractors for each individual project (the best designer for a children’s book cover might not be the same person as the best designer for a business book cover for example).
• You save money because you only hire people when you need them to complete specific tasks rather than paying a regular salary.

Now who exactly should be a part of your indie publishing team? What kinds of professionals might you want to hire as you bring your book to market? Here are several examples of contractors you might need to work with.

• Book marketing consultants
• PR consultants or publicists (not exactly the same thing)
• Cover designers
• Typesetters
• Developmental editors
• Line editors
• Proofreaders
• Copywriters (for your back cover blurb and marketing materials)

You may hire all of these people. You might be qualified to do some of the work yourself (I work as a freelance business writer, where I handle copywriting on a regular basis so I wouldn’t hire a copywriter, and I used to run a PR firm so I can handle that end for example). And some projects simply don’t need some of these people (a developmental editor would be more for a novel than a nonfiction book).

I’ve yet to meet an author who can honestly do all of these things themselves. And I can tell you from experience that trying to do it all yourself can wear you down and kill your project’s potential over time.

I’m sure I’m missing some other contractors you might consider working with. So who would you add to this list? Are there any here you hadn’t thought of while working on your own book? If you’ve already released one or more books and you could go back and do it over again, would you bring in any of these professionals to help? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Joel Friedlander on Book Cover Design for Indie Publishers

Joel Friedlander

It’s no secret that your book cover design is an important book marketing tool — for indie authors and traditionally published authors alike. Yet many self published authors and indie publishers take the DIY route and the results are often easy to spot in relation to professional cover designs.

Who better to talk about cover design issues like these than one of the industry’s go-to guys (and a fellow independent author), Joel Friedlander? You probably know him from his outstanding blog, The Book Designer. He was kind enough to let me pick his brain a bit about book cover design for indie authors — from common mistakes to budget considerations. Here’s what he had to say.

Jenn: You do much more than cover design work, but what first convinced you to offer that specific service to independent authors?

Joel: When I began Marin Bookworks, my publisher-services company, I was working primarily for medium-size publishers who outsource the design and production of their books.

However, I had also self-published my own book, Body Types (http://www.amazon.com/Body-Types-Joel-Friedlander/dp/0936385405/), back in the 1980s. Every year I received more and more requests from authors who wanted to publish their own books. Now, most of my work is for self-publishers, so that tells you something about the changes in the publishing industry.

Although I used to offer quite a large range of services, over time I’ve pared them down and now I only do book interiors, covers, jackets, endleaves, stamping dies for hardcovers and that’s about it.

I also do more and more consulting with authors who are trying to figure out the best way to get into the indie publishing world.

Covers are a critical part of the development of your book. Authors are smart when they budget for a professional cover design, because it will brand their book and help to establish it in the marketplace.

Jenn: While we know that book cover design prices can vary greatly, if pressed (yes, I’m pressing) what would you recommend as the absolute minimum amount a brand new indie author should budget for to hire a professional cover designer?

Joel: Press on! Although I often hear Mark Coker of Smashwords talk about $35 e-book covers, if you are doing a print book you will need someone who knows how to put a book cover together properly to avoid problems when you get to press.

I would say you could find someone to do a decent cover starting at about $200, and an average price would be around $1000.

Jenn: What three things tend to scream “amateur!” the loudest when it comes to DIY book cover design?

Joel: Hey, that’s an easy one, Jennifer. In no particular order,

1. Using the wrong fonts. Many DIY covers are made using the system fonts that came with your computer. They weren’t meant for that, and it shows.
2. Bad or inappropriate stock photography or illustrations. These frequently have no discernible connection to the content or the market for the book. I guess the author thought they looked cool
3. Visual chaos. Too many images, lots of text, no specific visual focus for the cover. All these things  confuse the message you’re trying to send.

Jenn: When would you suggest that indie authors bring cover designers in on the process? Should they wait until the book is fully edited? Or should they bring in a designer earlier so they have more time to print marketing collateral or incorporate the book branding into their own website?

Joel: Earlier is better, and not just for the excellent reasons you suggest. The cover of your book is the most important piece of advertising and branding you will create. My opinion is that the cover design is an intrinsic part of the marketing plan for the book and, as such, should be under discussion as early in the process as possible. In some cases, this will be before the book is even written.

Jenn: If you could give indie authors just one tip on working with and building an effective professional relationship with a book designer, what would you tell them?

Joel: The biggest problem I run into with indie authors, and one that has a serious negative effect on the work they get from their designer, is confusion about the purpose of the design. Authors who have invested years of work into their book, and who have dreams and aspirations tied up with the publication, are rarely objective about what will actually help to sell their book the best.

If an author sees the design of their book as a personal expression of their values, or an indication of their creativity, they will run into trouble with a designer who is, in essence, attempting to create a consumer product package for the book. These two approaches just don’t blend well.

If you’ve chosen a designer well, looked at her previous work, gotten a good referral from someone else, then relax and let her do her job. Be open to new ways to visualize how your book will look, and you’ll be much happier in the end.

Oh, and make sure the designer works under a contract that spells out responsibilities, payment terms, and termination procedures. A contract protects both of you from misunderstandings and helps to guarantee the project will run more smoothly. And that can lead to success for you and your book.

About Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is the proprietor of Marin Bookworks in San Rafael, California, a publishing services company where he’s helped launch many self-published authors. He blogs about book design, writing and self-publishing at TheBookDesigner.com. Joel is also the author of the newly-published A Self-Publisher’s Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish.

How You (Yes You) Can Create a Rockin’ Author Website

We recently looked at some of the reasons many author websites suck and I shared a few good author website designs with you as inspiration. Today let’s move on to some tools and resources that can help you improve the author website you already have or build a beautiful new site to promote your books.

There really is no excuse these days for even the least tech-savvy authors to have shoddy websites. There are countless Web templates and blog themes available. And today I want to focus on using pre-made templates to build a better website — something anyone can do.

Types of Web Templates

There are two primary types of pre-made Web templates you’ll come across including:

• Static website templates;
• Blog themes.

For most authors I would recommend going with a blog platform as your website’s back-end system. More specifically I recommend self-hosting a WordPress site.

One of the biggest reasons I suggest WordPress to folks who are new to setting up websites is that once you’ve installed the system and set up the template (WordPress theme), you really get to play in a familiar playground. You can log into your site’s admin area and add pages or blog posts using a familiar wysiwyg (“what you see is what you get”) editor — the same tools you probably use in your favorite word processing program.

Now let’s take a look at WordPress themes and how you can find awesome options for your new or updated author website.

Types of WordPress Themes

You’ll come across two main groups of WordPress themes, including:

• Free themes;
• Premium themes.

One set is free. The other you pay for. Free has its benefits (namely being free). But there are drawbacks too. For example, you’re often required to keep one or more links in the footer — sometimes just to the designers and sometimes to sponsor sites. When you put unrelated links in your footer, that looks incredibly unprofessional and it tells people you didn’t care enough to invest in your site. And if you won’t invest in your site, why on earth should people be willing to invest in your books promoted there? Free themes are fine for personal use, but I recommend against most of them for any site tied to a business (and like it or not, if you’re selling your book you’re in business).

There are exceptions. Actually, there are only two that I can think of and they include:

• Free themes with no link requirements (rare);
• Free themes where the author will let you remove those links for a nominal fee that you still find affordable (most ask for $20 or less in my experience).

In most cases however I recommend premium themes.

Benefits of Using Premium WordPress Themes

Most premium themes offer benefits you rarely find with free themes, such as:

• Themes don’t saturate the market as much when people have to pay for them;
• Premium themes usually let you change the footer info and links (but not all so check the license terms);
• Premium WordPress themes are often better-designed than free ones;
• You’ll often get better support and updates for premium themes than free ones;
• These days many premium themes come with their own easy-to-use admin area to adjust how the theme looks (so you don’t have to mess around with the code as much, if at all).

Where to Get Premium WordPress Themes

There are two basic ways to buy premium WordPress themes, including:

• Theme clubs (such as from WooThemes or Elegant Themes);
• One-off purchases (through marketplaces like Theme Forest or private designers).

I don’t personally have a preference. Some of my sites are custom designed and coded by me. Others are custom-made by designers and coders I hire. Some are built on one-off premium themes. And several (including this blog) are using premium themes from theme clubs (where you pay a monthly or yearly fee for access to all themes a site offers as well as support). They can all work well as long as your design suits your market and your goals for the site.

Features to Look for in an Author Site WordPress Theme

Not all themes are created equal. You should look for themes that offer functionality you’ll want on your site. You can also add features using plugins later, but sometimes design elements like page template types are harder to figure out on your own unless you’re experienced in PHP, HTML, and CSS.

The main thing to be concerned with is e-commerce functionality. Most themes aren’t set up for sites designed to sell things — as you’ll do with your books (if you plan to sell them directly on-site). So look for e-commerce sites. Some are designed to sell software or e-books for example, but you can easily tailor them to sell books instead. Having a page template included that can feature multiple products in gallery form and also on individual product pages would be a big bonus.

More advanced themes also come with specialty page templates that can do other things, like feature a collection of testimonials (which you might use to feature quotes from good reviews). I also suggest finding one with a built-in full-page option (that lets you create pages with or without a sidebar like you’re used to seeing on blogs). It gives you variety and lets you really customize your site easily. Every page doesn’t have to look exactly the same.

Customizing WordPress Themes

It’s not enough to choose a great base theme to work with. The more unique you can make it, the better it is for branding and other marketing purposes. On this blog I didn’t change things much visually from the template, but I did customize specific features to make the site work in a better way for my needs. On others I drastically change the design, just keeping the underlying code structure.

You don’t have to get fancy. But there are some basic changes you should probably make, including:

• Get rid of default blogroll entries / links;
• Add your logo (unless it’s a personal site, a blah-looking text name just isn’t enough);
• Put your author photo on the site (people love to connect work to faces);
• Upload any book cover art or other images you want to feature;
• Update the footer with your copyright information;
• Adjust font choices, text sizes, and basic colors to better suit your tastes and your books.

A while back I created a tutorial for a client on making basic theme changes for newbies to blog design and CSS (cascading style sheets — the code that tells a browser what design elements to display for your site). If you’re unsure of even the basics like adjusting margins or replacing default header text with your logo image, please check out that article for instructions: “The Most Important HTML and CSS Tips for WordPress Newbies.”

Want to use WordPress as a more advanced content management system (CMS) to create a traditional-looking website with an attached blog, where you can manage it all from a single admin area?  I have a tutorial for that too! Check out “How to Use WordPress to Set up a Combination Professional Site and Blog” for tips and advice on creating your own combo-style site. There’s no need to set up a “real” website and then sign up with a separate blog host to manage a blog. Keep your branding consistent and keep your traffic on your own site instead.

Hopefully these theme resources and customization tips will help you create a better-looking and more functional author website of your own. Have other tips you’d like to share or examples of great author websites? Leave a comment below to tell us about them.

Why Author Websites Suck (and Why Yours Doesn’t Have To)

Authors are notorious for having poorly-designed websites. That’s not to say all authors have dated, crappy sites littering the Web. But more in this group do than most others I’ve come across. Sometimes author site designs are downright frightening, looking like someone formatted some text in Word and slapped it on the Web in the mid to late-90s, never to update it again.

The saddest case is when we have a currently active author who does update their site or blog, but it still doesn’t pass muster in even the most basic Web design standards. I came across one from an author whose book I was reading a couple of weeks ago and it made me want to weep for her. I’m going to spare the sucky website owners today and not name names. But I do want to point out some common errors and problems with author websites.

What Makes for a Sucky Author Website?

If you’re serious about your author website or blog and you want it to represent you in the best light possible, avoid these Web design issues:

1. Never have sound automatically play when someone opens your website.

I don’t care how cool you think it is. You’ve just invaded your visitors’ system, taking control away from them — not cool if they’re somewhere where they don’t want the world knowing what they’re doing online. If you want sound, default it to off and include a button to un-mute it if the visitor wants to hear it. There is absolutely no good excuse to have auto-play music or speech on a website anymore. You’re stuck in an old fad frame of mind.

2. Make sure your main navigation links actually go somewhere.

I’m not sure why I even have to say that. But this happens all the time. I’ll click on a contact link and get a 404 (page not found) error. Or I’ll click a link that’s supposed to take me to someone’s book details page and it just throws me back to the homepage.

I don’t expect all authors to be tech-savvy. But I do expect them to at least click their own links once in a while to make sure their sites aren’t broken. If they break after an update, you should be able to find those issues and fix them fairly quickly (like I did here after a recent server move and back-end upgrade that affected permalinks).

3. Please be easy on the eyes.

Authors are clearly targeting audiences of readers. So you would think they’d want their own site content to be readable. Yet many author sites are hard on the eyes because the authors don’t bother to educate themselves about basic Web readability issues.

For example, you might like Times New Roman in a printed book manuscript. But on a screen sans-serif fonts are often easier to read, especially with the smaller main content text sizes people use or if you intend for your site to be mobile-friendly. If you have a text-heavy site, please have the courtesy to use them or at least make your serif fonts large enough that they don’t come across as pixelated and eye-straining. If you really love your serif fonts, use them in headings and subheadings to add some visual interest.

Also keep in mind that while you might think using light text on a dark background looks great, it’s not conducive to easy reading. Please stop. And for goodness sake if you’re using good old hyperlink blue on a black background, go sit in a corner for a while and then come back and start from scratch. Use dark elements when appropriate. But you can do that to get a dark overall feel while still keeping main text backgrounds lighter.

4. Forget about all-Flash websites.

Oh, pretty pretty please stop subjecting us to these. I remember when they were first becoming a popular option. At that time I worked largely with indie musicians who just couldn’t resist playing with them for visual impact. However, most grew up and left Flash websites behind (like most of the online world) long ago. Why haven’t authors gotten the hint yet?

First of all they’re not great for you — unless you have a corresponding HTML version of that site, don’t count on ranking well in search engines (which should matter to you if you care about effective marketing). More importantly they’re clunky and slow, or at least most are.

Visitors don’t want to see a loading bar. They want some sense of familiarity. For example, I like to preview link destinations in my status bar before clicking anything even slightly suspect. But I can’t do that in a Flash site. I like to right click and copy a link address so I can share it on my own blog if I’m going to promote someone. Can’t do that easily either, at least not for on-site links because several pages of content can actually display under the main URL rather than separate pages. It makes me want to pull my hair out, and probably not go back to your site.

These are some of the most common problems I’ve come across on author websites. Are you guilty of any of them? When did you design that site? Is it time for an overhaul?

In our next post I want to share some examples of good author websites to inspire you to improve your own. And I’ll close out this series with a post sharing resources that will help authors of any level of design and technical skill build a better website to promote their books.

How Important is Your Book’s Spine Design?

Book spines — oh, they’re important alright. I was reminded just how important they are on my weekend book-buying binge at our (sadly) closing Borders. At the end of the day I left with nearly 30 new mysteries. And then I ordered 11 more online to fill in the gaps in the series, and still have another order or two to place in coming weeks to finish the collection.

What does that have to do with book spine designs? Everything. I went in looking for some Sarah Strohmeyer (started a first book from her and love it) and Victoria Laurie (haven’t read yet but have heard good things) books. I left with books from at least a half dozen authors, and it was all because of their spine designs.

Why Book Spines Matter in Marketing

In a physical bookstore the book spine is probably the first thing a potential buyer sees, assuming you’re in the stacks and not out on display. Similar books often have similar cover and spine design elements. I can look at a book spine and say “this is a cozy mystery probably featuring a female amateur sleuth” before I even look at the book’s title, nonetheless pull it off the shelf to read the back cover. And if I’m looking for something new as a reader, that instant visual attraction is what ropes me in over Joe Schmo’s book next to yours.

Now not all indie published books will make it to physical bookstore shelves. But the same applies in libraries — when someone wants to check out a new author, the book spine might be the first thing to attract them. When it comes to online sales, the front cover is more important.

What a Book Spine Tells (or Should Tell) a Reader

From that perspective of a buyer, there are a couple of things I expect a book spine to tell me before I even touch a book:

1. What genre (or sub-genre in the case of mysteries) your book falls into;
2. What the book is about, at least in a vague sense.

The first can be relatively easy. Some genres and sub-genres have consistent color themes. For example, when I see books in the mystery section with bright pink or pastel color schemes, I can safely bet they’re targeting females or at least feature a female sleuth. When I see dark covers with big, bold lettering they tend to lean more towards the thriller side.

The second is apparently tougher, although I don’t know why. And it’s where a lot of book spine designs fail in my opinion. You have to remember that the spine has to catch someone’s eye from at least a few feet away. If they can’t read the title of the book from there, they might skim right past you to someone else’s book. This is something a few series I picked up struggled with (and I only found them because I was on the hunt for every similar series I could get my hands on that day — a less discerning reader than usual). Some focus on obnoxiously dainty title text which is almost unreadable until the book is in-hand. It doesn’t catch my eye. It doesn’t give me a better idea of the series, not to mention the individual book’s story. It doesn’t usually help you make the sale. I’ll pass you over.

I know you don’t have a lot of room to work with. But please, keep the text bold enough that your title is clear. If you’re selling solely online this might not be an issue. If you plan to sell in print outlets or rely heavily on libraries to drive interest in your books, these are things you might want to consider. And remember, even if they aren’t sold off of a book case, they’ll probably end up on one. And those spines can still play a role when readers decide which book to pick up and re-read (and therefore spread the word about when they realize how much they love your book all over again).

Do you think your spine designs have helped or hurt your book sales? Have they not impacted sales at all because you only sell online? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts.