Sue Campbell writes about design, books, writing, art, & life …

Here is a link to a really great explanation of why it does take so long for a book to get released from the traditional publisher. This post by Jay Lake, author with Macmillan about all the steps from both his POV and the publisher’s. Twenty six months! That’s a long, long time. But you’ll see that nobody is sitting on their hands at any point in the process.

It generally doesn’t take this long with smaller publishers, or self-publishers. (Though some would argue, it should.) All of those steps between acquiring the manuscript and first release are vital to the quality and success of the book. The reason is takes much longer at a larger pub house, is that they are doing this with several/many/hundreds of books at the same time—and resources are finite.

Smaller publishers are typically working with fewer titles and sometimes outsourcing the work to multiple contractors. So things can sometimes/usually get done a bit faster. However one resource remains finite—money. There are only so many books a small publisher can afford to produce/publish at one time. This is becoming more true at bigger houses too, even their deep pockets aren’t bottomless.

Very good post! Read it.

Tags: author, book production, book publishing, marketing, publishers, publishing, time management

Drum roll please…. Here are the three cover ideas for Ellen A. Wilkins’ entry, Follows Direction.  Once again I learned that what I read, misled me. I read into this entry a bit more humor than was really there. (I guess I am wanting some funny books!) And for sure next time I am asking for genre and a little more of a sample right up front.

Here is Ellen’s synopsis and excerpt.
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Tags: art, book, bookcover, contest, cover, creativity, critique, design, Nanowrimo

I’m enjoying the discussions of the covers for Breath. The interesting thing about cover design is that it’s largely subjective. What appeals to people is depends on their backgrounds, their preferred genres, their cultures, education, socio-economic level, and gender among other things. With all the variables it’s a wonder we can agree on anything! But there are some truisms around genre and covers that do seem to be valid—until somebody bucks a trend and then new “rules” come into being — for a while. Though good design is good design and bad design is bad based on some basic rules of aesthetics, and composition regardless of genre.

But enough pontificating! Let’s move on to Brett Stanfill’s entry titled: Confessions of the Dearly Departed.
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Tags: art, bookcover, contest, cover, critique, design

Apropos of absolutely nothing I just heard about these books in the YA (young adult) fantasy genre. I really, really like these covers.

Both by Carrie Jones and both currently on the NYT Bestseller List. Unfortunately I do not know who the designer is, because they don’t put that kind of info in the Amazon listing. Nor do they list the designer on the publisher’s site. I think they should! If I stop into a bookshop, and find out…I will update.

ETA: I did see these covers at Borders yesterday. They are nicer in person, with matte finish and spot gloss on the gold bits. The gold is 4 color process not foil or metallic gold ink like I thought they might be. But then, cost is always an issue even with large print runs like those Bloomsbury does. The deisgner of the covers is Nicole Gastonguay. Great job Nicole!

Tags: author, Bloomsbury, bookcover, Carrie Jones, cover, design, designer, inspiration, Nicole Gastonguay, Penguin books

First let me apologize once again for how long it’s taken me to get these underway. All kinds of things just conspired against me having any time to work on them. Paying work has to come first, because, this is my job after all. Writing and holding contests are just my hobby! So here goes.

These three winning entries gave me some interesting challenges. They represent a diversity of genre and style. And because the synopses and excerpts were so short, I inferred a lot. Perhaps too much. I inquired after starting on the covers that I had read into two of them a style that wasn’t intended, and in the other I had the gender of the main character wrong!

This informs me that if when I do this contest again I need to change the entry format to include a little more information! So lets  get started with my design ideas and what I was thinking. (Don’t you often want to know what in the heck a designer was thinking when they did that cover? Well here’s your chance.)

Beginning in no particular order we’ll start with Sora Kess’s entry called Breath. Here is what I had to go on:
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Tags: art, bookcover, contest, cover, creativity, critique, design, Nanowrimo

I’m not a fan of so-called vanity publishing. But I don’t object to self-publishing, or even partner publishing. There is a place for all kinds of publishing. What I do object to is deceptive practices that some service providers either explicitly promise successful outcomes, or allow their clients to believe. Every would be author has to believe in their hearts that their book will be a success and propel them to fame and fortune (relitively speaking) otherwise they wouldn’t embark on such a foolish venture as publishing. But when presses are truthful about the probable outcomes and spell out in detail the work that must be undertaken byt the self-published author to promote and sell books—then that’s just fine.

The recent flap about traditional publishers (Harlequin) teaming up with Author Solutions to publish authors who don’t make the cut in their publishing cue is troublesome for only one reason. There is a big conflict of interest here. If Harlequin’s editors decide that a book is maybe a risk, perhaps it’s by a new author, or is controversial, or just not a “commercial” storyline,  or just badly written — they can move that book into the A.S. cue. They will suggest to the author that the book could be published with A.S. for a fee. Thus removing the risk for H. and putting on the author, who pays the cost while getting the benefit of publishing under the brand of H’s newline of not quite up to Harlequin’s standards — whatever they’ve decide to name that line now. (Now, now, I can see you grinning ironically out there. I’m not a romance fan, but they do account for the single largest segment of books sold in the world. So just erase that smirk.)

But anyway, I am following this whole thing with interest, because on a broader level it’s a symptom of what’s happening in publishing as a whole. Publishers must find new ways of surviving, and we may need to open our minds to new ways of thinking about what is an acceptable business model. That doesn’t take away the conflict of interest in this one case, but opening the dialogue to be willing to talk about it is probably a good thing.

I thought that this video from  the CEO of Author Solutions was interesting. I’ll be watching to see what happens.

Tags: Author Solutions, Harlequin, self-publishing, vanity press

OK, no sponsors. It’s just me.

I know that my three contest winners are waiting anxiously for their covers. And um… I haven’t had much time to devote to them yet. I’m at the research and “noodling” stage. Next comes “doodling,” but we mustn’t short change the noodle part. Though there’s nothing concrete to show for it, the thinking part of design is the germ from which it all comes.

Meanwhile, I direct your attention to this old interview with moi, conducted by the publisher of Stephens Press, Carolyn Hayes Uber. In it, I talk about cover design, the process, my thoughts and opinions, inspirations, and how it all happens.

Meanwhile, I noodle and very soon some doodles will appear here. And I promised a post on genre design. That’s coming too.

Tags: book publishing, bookcover, Carolyn Hayes Uber, contest, cover, creativity, inspiration, Stephens Press

This is an idea generating, stimulating online tool that anyone can use to find that elusive “right” word.  Visuwords presents words, their meanings, synonyms, homonyms, etc,  in an intuitive and colorful interface. It’s much deeper than it looks at first glance.

click to view

“Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

Visuwords uses Princeton University WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.

Next time you’re stuck looking for the right word, give it a try!

Tags: creativity, words, writer's block, writing

If you are a content creator, that is a writer, designer, editor, publisher, or a content consumer (all of us) you should watch this very informative interview with Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media. They have been know for years as publishers of all types of tech books, and many non-fiction titles, but have branched out into ALL kinds of books and content. This 30 minute interview is chock full of thought provoking nuggets of information, ideas for the future, and strategies that content purveyors are trying out.

Some strategies I thought were interesting and worth more thought were: lowering prices of e-content will make you more money than higher prices, that what books do is index a vast amount of material into digestible bites, that selling “books” in chunks or serialization might be a good idea, and that we should consider subscription models. All concepts that aren’t new but worth reconsidering. Also he said that content “will get paid for.” But my question is by whom? and to whom?

Kudos to Adobe for making this available to us all. The Future of Publishing

Tags: book publishing, books, business models, future, video

Here’s the big announcement!

Drum rolls please…. The three winners are, and no particular order:

Confessions of the Dearly Departed by Brett Stanfill
Follows Direction by Ellen A. Wilkin
Breath by Sora Kess

Let me tell you narrowing down the (confession time — nine) entries to just these three was not easy. Were I an agent or a publisher, my next step would have been to narrow the choices down, and ask for a partial, or a complete manuscript. But I’m not, so what I had to go on mostly was the synopsis. Hint writers: practice the art of synopsis writing or query writing. The hook must be good and it must be there in the first couple of sentences. Need help learning what it should do/sound like? Go to the bookstore and read back cover copy. Essentially, if you can boil down your story into compelling back cover copy you’ve got your hook.

But back to the contest. Because the excerpts were so short I really concentrated on the synopses to sell me the idea. Was there enough of an idea to carry off a complete and engaging story? Did I clearly get an idea who the main characters were and what was at stake for them? OR was the idea so compelling that I could see images coming together to illustrate it?

The nature of Nanowrimo is such that I know these are first drafts and that likely no editing or rewriting went into the entries. So I didn’t choose based on the quality of the writing itself, since again, 250 words of an excerpt is barely enough to give me a hint at whether or not a writer my be able to pull off their idea in the final manuscript. But I hope so. That said, there was one standout in this regard—at least in the little excerpt I read—Sora Kess’s entry Breath was lyrical and intriguing and images swirled in her text and in my mind. Can she pull it off in the long haul? I’d be interested in finding out.

Given that I have some other work in house, and real life obligations, I ask these winners and those following this contest to have patience with me. Cover concepts WILL be coming just as soon as possible. I’ve decided to let you all in on the design process and show how these covers evolve from concept through finished piece. I hope you’ll come back to see how that happens.

For those of you not chosen—please take heart—I enjoyed reading your entries. You made the choice difficult. What creative ideas you all have! The ideas ran the gamut, though sci-fi and fantasy seemed to dominate. I did not pick winners based on genre, because ALL genres are legitimate, and deserve to be considered.

In this contest, I did leave genre off the list of things to tell me. But genre is VERY important when it comes to querying and in cover design. That’s another post altogether and one I will address in future.

Meanwhile for next year’s contest if you have suggestions about how to make it better, and how to get the word out, please comment here. I would loved to hear from you.

Congratulations “winners!” Congratulations to all of you. You’re truly all winners.

Tags: bookcover, contest, cover, creativity, design, hook, Nanowrimo, query