Tag Archives: cover designer

The Top 10 Fonts You Should Never Use on a Book Cover (and 15 better alternatives)

I’ve liked typography since high school. I’ve even made my own fonts. I believe there’s a time and a place for almost every font—but not your book cover.

font top 10

Your cover’s job is to convince us to read your book, that it’s worth our time and money more than the other 500,000 books out there. Most of these fonts are going to do the opposite: they’re so overused or generic, they have no place on your cover.

font arial
Arial and a number of its sans serif cohorts (Helvetica, Tahoma, Lucida Sans) have become the go-to fonts when we want a clean, sans serif look. Admittedly, they can sometimes work, but Arial . . . unless you want your book to look like somebody’s web page, just leave it alone.

font black jack
I wish I had a collection of all the places I’ve seen this font, starting with my blog header from seven years ago. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this font, I guess, but I’ve seen it on book covers, company logos, signs and more. It was a good font once. Let it die.

font bradley
This one might be leaning a little toward personal preference, but it comes down to this: if your font came bundled with Microsoft Word, it’s probably already overused.

font mistral
This is the font we used to look like you were handwriting something . . . in elementary school.

Along these same lines, Brush Script. Just don’t do it.

font papyrus
Okay, when your font is mentioned by name in a parody, it’s over. This font has been used to “represent” so many times and places that it’s lost all inherent meaning. Ancient Egypt? British Navy? Werewolves? WHY NOT? A local restaurant thinks it screams “contemporary Mexican,” especially in red text over a green hacienda. It screams, “Totally illegible” to me.

font scriptina
This font was already starting to be overused about eight years ago. You want swirly and you want statements, but you don’t want “Oh yeah, that’s the same kind of writing my friend’s blog used ten years ago.”

font chiller
This font is not scary; it’s illegible. This font does not make your book look frightening or suspenseful. It makes it look amateurish.

font tnr
I love Times New Roman. I do. I reset every word processor I use to write in Times New Roman. But the default font of business communications has no place on (or in!) your book. At all.

Possible exception: you’re writing a history of Times New Roman. Then sure.

font dearest
And all other 18th- and 19th-century handwriting fonts. They do not make your book look intriguing, historical or cool. They make your book look cliché.

Possible exceptions: your book is actually set in the 18th or 19th century and involves handwritten notes. Or you’re a pirate.

You, sir, are no pirate.

font comic sans
Just no.

(If I have to explain why, please just take this as a sign that you need to hire a cover designer.)

Viable alternatives

Naturally, in a year or two or five, these could all well become candidates for the list, but here are some legitimate, free alternatives to the above!

Handwriting fonts

Step aside, Mistral & Bradley Hand. Check out these handdrawn fonts from FontSquirrel.com. Of particular note, I like Harabara Hand, Jinky (unless you’ve got a capital J in your name or title . . . totally thought that said “linky”), and Journal. (Caution on Rock Salt, though. Anything Google offers as an option for Blogger headers is probably at the tipping point.)

Sans serif

You can do better than Arial et al. Sans serif fonts at FontSquirrel are a good place to start. My faves are more stylized (Lintel) or sophisticated (Linux Biolinium, Proza, Tenderness).

Serif

Yep, you can use serif fonts on covers. Again, Times New Roman is out (and as this article points out, Trajan and Copperplate are overdone in this department, too). It’s almost hard to go wrong other than that.

For interiors, steer clear of Times New Roman, too. Book Antiqua, Palatino and Garamond are all standard choices, while Bembo, Baskerville and the like are what professionals gravitate toward. Me? I’m partial to Linux Libertine: legible with LOTS of extended special characters. FontSquirrel has more serif options, too.

Script

Let’s do away with BlackJack in favor of some more original alternatives! Try Dancing script or Euphoria script. Going a little fancier? CAC Champagne has served me well, and Great vibes is lovely.

You want something with extra flourish? Pass by Scriptina and consider Miama or Promocyja. Legible and fancy. If you’re feeling daring, skirt the edge of readability with Lovers quarrel.

Choosing fonts

When choosing a font, always remember to look at your title (or name or whatever) in that font. I usually choose my fonts based on those specific glyphs—like the font in my header (from P22 type foundry). I chose it for the J glyph; I actually had to alter the M to get what I really wanted.

If you’re really, really picky, or you want something even more specialized, I suggest shopping at MyFonts.

Matching a font you’ve seen elsewhere? Try Identifont (describing it according to a limited set of letters) or MyFont’s WhatTheFont! (upload image).

No affiliate links here, folks. I’m that committed to typography.

Want to win $30? Enter the review contest!

Indie author resources blog fest!

Today is the day! Link up here!

When you publish your own works, everything comes down to you. You have to find and hire the editors, proofreaders, cover designer, interior designer, e-book formatter . . . it can be daunting to line up all those other professionals to make your book come to life at last.

I read many great blogs on self-publishing, and I’m not looking to change the overall focus of my blog. However, I do really want to acknowledge the amazing support staff I’ve worked with in producing my books. So I’m putting together the . . . Indie Author Resources Blog Fest!

indie resources blog fest

Today, Monday, January 20, if you’re an indie author—or if you just happen to know of an editor, cover designer or other publishing professional who does quality work—post about them on your blog, and come back here to link up below!

How to participate

Indie author resources blog fest1. The theme is Indie author resources. It’s all about showing some love for all those people who helped make your book great. So who do you put in your post?

  • Editors—content, copy, line, and proof
  • Designers—cover, interior, e-book, and other promotional graphics
  • Formatters—e-book, print
  • Printers—print-on-demand, short run, long run, promotional materials
  • Any other professionals who helped make your book the best it could be!

Be sure to include links to their websites!

2. If you’re not (yet?) an indie author, but you know exactly who you’d hire, please join in!

3. If you wouldn’t recommend their work, don’t include the person in your post.

4. Post your resources on your blog January 20, 2014, and add it to the Mr. Linky here. Link your post back to the blogfest on here so your readers can read other entries, too. (The best link is http://JordanMcCollum.com/indie-resources/ )

5. Read, enjoy, and comment on other entries!

6. The index! After the blog fest, I’ll be compiling a list of the recommended professionals for ease of use. I’ll link back to all posts, of course!

So, in short: on January 20, write a blog post about an e-book professional, link back here in your post, and sign up on the linky.

Join in now!

Thank you to everyone who signed up in advance (you can find that list here). Please be sure to link up today with the link DIRECTLY TO YOUR POST, i.e. http://yourblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/indie-author-resources.html.

Again, DO NOT PUT IN YOUR PLAIN BLOG URL (http://yourblog.blogspot.com). If someone comes back to click on your link in a month, they won’t be able to find your post and they will leave your blog frustrated and disappointed!!

FULL URLs, PLEASE!!!

(Sorry for the difficulty; the linky’s host crashed. It’s back now, but if we’ve lost your link, please re-enter!

Spread the word

Tell your friends! To share the badge, copy this code and paste it in the HTML of a blog post or your sidebar:

<a href="http://jordanmccollum.com/indie-resources/" title="Indie author resources blog fest. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" alt="Indie author blog festbadge. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/indieresourcesblogfest.png" width="300" /></a>

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Original Yellow Pages photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC

My indie author resources

indie resources blog festToday is the Indie Author Resources Blog Fest! I’m sharing my best indie author resources—and this Thursday, I’ll also premiere a self-publishing nuts-and-bolts column at Janice Hardy’s blog, The Other Side of the Story!

I’m a planner. I tried to go about doing everything the exact perfect way, and I spent six month seriously working on the run-up before I published my first book—after it was written and polished and prettified.

The legal stuff: setting up your publishing company

I am not a lawyer! This is not legal advice! This is the process I followed.

  • File for a Doing Business As (DBA) with the state to create a sole proprietorship
  • File for a federal EIN with the IRS
  • File for a state tax number
  • File for a city/county business license

When using your FEIN with a DBA, remember that you need to use your name, not your DBA’s. This gave me a bunch of problems with signing up with Nook Press, until I called the IRS and asked. (I heard a rumor that they actually want to make sure you do your taxes right, so they answer questions. Gasp. Same with the state tax commission. They’ve answered my questions that would seem extremely stupid to anyone who’d done this before.)

I bought my ISBNs direct from Bowker. Since my publishing plan (and my writing file!) already includes more than 10 ISBNs (one print and one digital per book), I bought a block of 100.

The writing

I’ve had the privilege of working with some great editors. Angela Eschler and Heidi Brockbank edited I, Spy, while Jenn Wilks came through with fantastic rush jobs on Mr. Nice Spy and Spy for a Spy.

Of course, I have to give major credit to my critique partners, Emily Gray Clawson and Julie Coulter Bellon. They are basically my content and structural editors, and they are phenomenal. But they’re not for hire, sorry.

The pretty stuff: design, layout & formatting

You know how they say you can have a job done good, fast and cheap—just pick two?

They’re wrong. Steven Novak, my cover designer, is talented, fast, and very reasonably priced! He is the reason I wanted to do this blog fest, and I cannot recommend him highly enough (and I’m ecstatic to be sharing more of his work this week!!). With my first cover, I had so many revisions even I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore, but Steven put up with all of my changes. As soon as I nailed down my vision, he nailed the perfect image, and I fell in love with my first cover.

DIY Queen: everything else I did myself

I put the indie in indie author. I really like to go my own way, so I did a lot of the work myself. By hand. So instead of sharing service providers, I’m sharing links on how I learned these skills.

I did my own ebook formatting. To format an ebook from scratch, if you have knowledge of DOS, HTML and CSS, the tutorial at BB eBooks is excellent. It took me a couple days to learn everything and create the necessary files, but I can use that book as a template. I made the images for the book interior in a free image editor, Paint.NET, except, of course, my author portraits, which were taken by award-winning photographer Jaren Wilkey.

I also did my own print interior layout. I learned many principles of interior book design and book typography from The Book Designer blog written by Joel Friedlander. His guides to book design were indispensable. He also offers affordable print book templates for Word, but I finalized my design a couple weeks before he premiered them, dang it. For finding free commercially licensed fonts, I recommend FontSquirrel.

I’ve used CreateSpace and Alexanders for printing my book. Brigham Distributing is my distributor.

(My books are a labor of love. I’m not getting into the business of formatting print or e-books, and although I love you dearly, I won’t do it for you.)

Come share your indie author resources today!

Original Yellow Pages photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC

Indie resources blog fest & other news!

When you publish your own works, everything comes down to you. You have to find and hire the editors, proofreaders, cover designer, interior designer, e-book formatter . . . it can be daunting to line up all those other professionals to make your book come to life at last.

I read many great blogs on self-publishing, and I’m not looking to change the overall focus of my blog. However, I do really want to acknowledge the amazing support staff I’ve worked with in producing my books. So I’m putting together the . . . Indie Author Resources Blog Fest!

indie resources blog fest

On Monday, January 20, if you’re an indie author—or if you just happen to know of an editor, cover designer or other publishing professional who does quality work—post about them on your blog, and come back here to link up!

Spread the word

Tell your friends! Copy this and paste it in the HTML of a blog post or your sidebar:

<a href="http://jordanmccollum.com/indie-resources/" title="Indie author resources blog fest. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" alt="Indie author blog festbadge. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/indieresourcesblogfest.png" width="300" /></a>

Want it bigger or smaller? Change the number at width="300" to adjust the size.

How to participate

Indie author resources blog fest1. The theme is Indie author resources. It’s all about showing some love for all those people who helped make your book great. So who do you put in your post?

  • Editors—content, copy, line, and proof
  • Designers—cover, interior, e-book, and other promotional graphics
  • Formatters—e-book, print
  • Printers—print-on-demand, short run, long run, promotional materials
  • Any other professionals who helped make your book the best it could be!

Be sure to include links to their websites!

2. If you’re not (yet?) an indie author, but you know exactly who you’d hire, please join in!

3. If you wouldn’t recommend their work, don’t include the person in your post.

4. Post your resources on your blog January 20, 2014, and add it to the Mr. Linky here. Link your post back to the blogfest on here so your readers can read other entries, too. (The link will be http://JordanMcCollum.com/indie-resources/ )

5. Read, enjoy, and comment on other entries!

6. The index! After the blog fest, I’ll be compiling a list of the recommended professionals for ease of use. I’ll link back to all posts, of course!

So, in short: on January 20, write a blog post about an e-book professional, link back here in your post, and sign up on the linkie.

Sign up in advance!

Original Yellow Pages photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC