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The book cover is the part of book publishing that is most common for micro publishers to hire an outsider to do. Here I have collected tips to become a better book cover customer, something that can save you money and give you a better end result. Please supplement the text with the information contained in my manuals or something I have previously written about book covers.

A professional book cover gives your book a better chance

The book cover, more specifically the front page, should not only convey who wrote the book and what the book is called. The front page will get the prospective reader to click from the online bookstore, grab it in brick and mortar bookstore or pick it up at a trade show. It is not enough for the book cover to be neat; it should attract the right people and give them a hint of what to expect. The latter is important. The book cover should give the viewer information about what kind of book it is in a few seconds. This makes the packaging one of the most important marketing decisions.

Creating a book cover that meets all requirements is an art. Therefore, the design of book covers is an area where it is common for micro publishers to hire professionals. When I asked in Forums, that’s what most people spend money on.

Do I have to pay for a book cover?

No. The right book cover helps to sell your book, but does it sell enough extra items to justify the cost? The answer to that question depends. If you have written down your memoirs for the family, it will probably never sell enough to justify an expensive cover financially. Then it may be worth it for other reasons.

No matter how much you spend on your book cover today, the cover will feel outdated in a few years because there are trends in cover design, which makes it a good idea to change book covers at regular intervals. If your book cover is not optimal today, you can make a better version later. It is not that bad idea because then you have more knowledge of how the readers perceive the book.

Choose a designer with style

The first step is to choose the right designer. The most important thing is finding a designer with a design language suitable for your book. When I published my first book, most cover designers were employed by major publishers. At least I had a hard time finding some when I googled (it may have been me using the wrong keyword). Today I get as many freelancers as I need. Many have posted a portfolio with examples of their works on their website. Another way is to get inspired with newly published books in the same genre as yours.

Start well before the release date

Once you have found one or more suitable designers, it is time to contact them, discuss your cover, and request a quote. You want to know price, terms and availability. It’s also not wrong to get a feel for how you communicate.

It is good to start with this well in advance of book publishing. You also want to know if the designer gives you the right to use the cover for different prints, editions and formats.

Keep the price down with a weel-thought order

The designer either charges a fixed price or hourly fee. Ask the designer to specify how many revisions are included in the fixed price. If the designer works on an hourly basis, the final price depends on how many changes you request. To avoid the rising bills and to respect the designer’s time, it is good to think about the kind of cover you want carefully so that you can place a clear order. There are some simple facts.

• author-name
• the book’s title
• format, size and type of binding
• possibly blurb (review quote) if you want it on the front
• if it should be something special like embossing, UV varnish
• Other things to send to the designer at some stage
• Printed Book ISBN (to create the back cover)
• publishing log
• back cover
• author photo in print format

You hire a designer because he or she is an expert at creating book covers that send the right signals. If the person in question is a professional, he or she also knows what’s trendy in the industry and what other books in your genre look like right now. It is this knowledge that you pay for. Therefore, it is wise to order an “attractive book cover” and not to delve into the details.

As a micro-publisher, we are faced with many decisions and choices. Sometimes it is a bit foggy in there or there are obstacles on the way but we overcome them. You pay for knowledge, not for execution. It’s better to think about the feelings than the details when giving instructions to your graphic designer. You want the “selling book cover,” not a “galloping white unicorn from the right with a red heart.”

Same applies when giving feedback. If you think your name looks too bad on the first sketch, don’t say “I want my name bigger” because then you will get just that. It’s much better to say, “can you make my name more visible?”. Then the designer can choose the best solution based on the conditions. Among the tools include changing the size (size), changing fonts, changing the color contrasts or moving the name to a more visible place on the cover. The result is guaranteed to be better than if you tie back your designer with too detailed instructions in your feedback.

If you are not completely satisfied with the overall impression, tell them what feels wrong and what impression you want instead. Do not try to solve the problem by providing detailed suggestions. It is the designer’s job to use his experience and knowledge to translate your wishes and not execute your instructions. Saying “move the unicorn half an inch to the left and mirror the harp” is the wrong feedback. It’s better to say that the cover looks creepy rather than romantic, that it appeals to the wrong age category or what you are now experiencing is the problem.

The result is better and it saves both you and the designer many gray hairs if you give feedback correctly. It is good idea to gather feedback from several sources before returning to the designer. Good questions to ask yourself at this stage:

• Does the book cover appear to belong other similar books?
• Does the cover stand out among other books in the same niche?
• Does the cover give the right gut feeling to the content?

If you have hired the right designer and made a well-thought order, you should be able to answer yes to all the questions.

Good luck with your book cover!

Melissa.

If you are an author and planning to self-publish your book then Amazon keyword research is not optional: you have to spend time and energy to do your research and use your chosen keywords wisely. If you do you are many steps ahead of your competitor otherwise your e-book may never see sunlight.

I will go one step further and claim that you should find your target keywords and do your due diligence even before you start writing your book. You will understand what I mean when you finish reading my article. Why do I think so? Let me show you.

As you see from the above graph there are some genres, niches, book categories you really need to stay away from. 

When it comes to what your books genre/niche there are more than enough opportunities perhaps too many. And it is impossible for me to give you a ready to allow pill on what your book should be about. But at least I can give you some tips on what not to do.

Based on Klytics search they monitored and ranked the sales of books in 426 sub-categories on Amazon Kindle. Nine book genres consistently showed up at the bottom of the list. Have a look at the graph.

See, readers buy physical books walking to bookstores but selling e-books is totally different story. In this article, I will show you how to research your keywords correctly in 2020 and more importantly how to use them to rank in the top 5 in your category.

Note: I refer to some tools below, most of them are free but you do not need paid tools to develop your keyword strategy, tools just make life easier and saves time but they are not mandatory.

So without further ado lets dive in my fellow authors. 

KEYWORDS?

What are keywords anyway? Keywords are the words or phrases that people enter into search engines to find what they’re looking for. And as you are selling e-books this is how potential readers will find you. 

Remember Amazon is one of the world’s largest search engines. Amazon keywords are the phrases that shoppers use to find the products they want on Amazon. And correct keyword strategy work for your book sales even while you sleep. So Amazon keyword research is crucial for your books success.

As a result, you want to use relevant keywords strategically in appropriate places on your book listing so that you bring traffic to your book and increase your sales. You need to learn to think like Amazon shoppers and foresee what they are looking for that could bring them to your book.

Before we get into the step-by-step process of finding profitable kindle keywords, let’s talk about what makes a profitable kindle keyword. A target Kindle Keyword should be a phrase or word that: 

• Readers actually use in Amazon search bar
• Readers pay for books in the resulting search results
• The competition is at a level you can beat (choose your fight wisely)

STEP-1: HOW TO FIND KEYWORDS THAT READERS USE TO FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR

I believe we all agree that knowing what buyers want is the first and most important step to make a sale. When it comes to e-books keywords tell you how people try to find what they are looking for and gives you a good insight into what they want (keyword search volume). Amazon search bar has an autofill function that will give you a very good starting point.

Start typing relevant words, phrases about your book, and Amazon autofill function will give you 10 suggestions, please do not forget to select the Kindle Store as a search category. Plus you need to open an incognito browser so that your previous searches do not affect your current search. 

Once you find a phrase that is relevant, add each letter of the alphabet at the end of your word/phrase, and see what comes up. See some examples below.

You need to repeat this process for every letter of the alphabet. Remember you are trying to find what people type search bar to find books similar to yours. It is a very good idea to use an excel sheet and taking note of all relevant phrases so you can use them to shape your book listing.

You can absolutely do this manually but there are some tools like KDSPY that can do it with one click. KDSPY is Amazon keyword, category and insight research tool for authors.

Please beware that Amazon forbids using certain keywords so make sure you check this link: Keywords to avoid.

You can download KDSPY Research Tool here

Now that you have an initial list of keywords you can work on. Now it is time to check what is the demand behind each one of those keywords, how often those keywords are used per month to decide if they are really worth going after. 

When you click Analyze link on the screen above KDSPY will give you how often this specific keyword is used by readers. This way you will clearly understand if this keyword is valuable for you as there are people using it to find a book they are looking for.

As you see from the above screenshot you can clearly analyze what is going on with keyword (golf workout this example): top 20 books, average monthly revenue, how many reviews you need at minimum, and average sales rank (BSR). You do not want to go after a keyword that has very low BSR as that means it is very competitive.

STEP 2: HOW TO FIND KINDLE KEYWORDS READERS ARE WILLING TO PAY 

Shoppers may type in the above words, but that doesn’t mean they’ll find what they are looking for or decide to purchase. There are some keywords out there that may be in demand but just don’t get sales. That’s why this step is important.

You have found what keywords readers are using, you know that there is a demand for them. At this stage, three good questions to ask are: Are people using a specific keyword finds what she is looking for? And even she finds, does she pay for the books coming up in search listing using this keyword? Plus what kind of competition you face out there for this keyword?

In this case, just look for 3 dots at the bottom right corner of KDSPY: if you have 3 green dots there, you are on to something, dive deeper for this keyword.

But you do not need to use a tool to check if a keyword is making money. Here is a manual way: first, enter that keyword to Amazon search bar, check the top five books that show up for that search. Next, copy their Amazon Best Seller Rank (ABSR) to an excel sheet.  Then use BSR to Sales Calculator to check the estimated daily and monthly sales volume of that specific book.

You can download KDSPY Research Tool here

If those top-five ranking books don’t make any money or less than the other books you find associated with other keywords options that mean readers who search for that keyword can not find what they are looking for and do not buy.

Now, you need to go back to your excel sheet, repeat the same process for each keyword in the list to find the ones not only getting searched but also making sales.

At this stage, you already have a great idea about what is going on in your book category, genre, and niche. You have a list of keywords that are in demand and people are paying for the related books associated with them. Now it is time to get some insights on who we are competing with. You know what they say: know your enemy! Just joking, we are all friends.

STEP-3: FIND OUT KINDLE KEYWORD COMPETITION

As you may already know the whole point of doing keyword research is to find a way to be listed in top search results when people use this keyword on their search. If we are not in let’s say in the top 10 even top 5 result lists then our book has very small chances.

At this point let me give you some stats so you better understand why it is important be at top search results.

Top 5 listed books (that show up in search results when readers type it in search bar) get whopping 63% of all the clicks. And the rest of the thousands of books share the remaining 37%.

What that means; your book needs to be in the top 5-10 and you need to beat your competition to be there. Otherwise, that keyword is useless for you. So here are some tips.

When you find your keywords make sure or do your best to include them in your book title and subtitle. It would also help to include them in your description, but that does not mean stuffing all those placements with keywords.

If you do so you will lose your relevancy with what readers are looking for and they won’t click so you need to do it wisely.

Online readers are also more tend to be visual people, that means you need to have an attention-grabbing, beautifully designed book cover. 

You need reviews, check how many verified reviews your competitors have. There are many ways you can get reviews, you can use this checklist for some great ideas. If you have many good reviews with respect to your competition, that is a sure way to boost your rankings.

So the number of positive reviews your competitors have, how popular their author is, how competitive your category/genre/niche all makes you decide if you need to go for that particular keyword or book idea. Amazon keyword research is not optional, you have to do it properly.

So as of now, you not only know your keywords that are in demand, making money you also know how competitive they are. That my friend is a lot of insight and should already give a very good idea in your book idea.

I just wanted to mention again that tools like KDSPY will give you all this information much faster, save you a lot of time and avoid mistakes.

You can download KDSPY Research Tool here

STEP-4: HOW TO USE ALL THE INFORMATION ABOUT KINDLE KEYWORDS YOU GATHERED?

As you have now all the keywords that meet the 3 criteria above (in demand, money-making, has competition that you can beat) it is time to go to Amazon and apply your keyword strategy. There are three actions you can take with them.

You already have an Amazon KDP account and in its dashboard Amazon allows you to assign 7 kindle keywords. So that’s where you will enter keywords you have found.

It is suggested that instead of stuffing this field with keyword use only the most relevant ones that meet the critical criteria we have mentioned, the main purpose of Amazon keyword research is to give your readers best user experience.

Use chosen keywords in your title and subtitle, wisely, as we discussed above.

Use the chosen keywords in your book description, as we discussed above. Please remember that your description is NOT a place where you should stuff with keywords.

The description is your sales copy whose main goal is to convince the reader that your book is what she is looking for and if you move away from that your keyword strategy won’t work.

So there you have it, you now have solid, data-backed Amazon Kindle Keyword strategy that will surely boost your ranking and sell more books, if done right.

Let me know if you have any questions on Amazon keyword research, I will be happy to help.

PS: I also prepared a Book Promotion Guide that you can combine with your keyword strategy to make your book a success.

PPS: You may find our Indie Author Checklist useful in your self-publishing journey.

I wish you all the best.

Melissa Mayer

The cover gives the reader the first impression of the book. It is an essential tool for marketing, and the cover should be appealing and exciting.

DEFINING A SUCCESSFUL COVER

Describing in concrete terms what a cover should look like is difficult. It has many different aspects, such as personal tastes and opinions, and how the reader perceives ​​an attractive cover. The most important thing is that the cover must fit the book content. Thus, planning always starts with the content.

It is crucial to consider the main purpose of the cover: A cover is a marketing tool, and it must be individual – but also follow the characteristics of the genre. If the book belongs to a series, the whole series should contain something that ties the books together. Your book cover is a reference to what awaits the reader and should, therefore, provide accurate information about what the book is about or what genre it belongs to. On the other hand, the cover is also what should get the reader to take the book in hand and contain creative and appealing elements.

SECTIONS OF THE COVER

The front of the cover plays the central role: It is seen in advertisements and online bookstores and receives the most attention. E-books only contain the front of the cover, so here the design should be extra carefully planned. When planning the cover, it is vital to consider the size displayed precisely in print. The cover usually appears very small and should, therefore, be clear and straightforward.

IMAGES

The cover can contain any kind of images: photographs, art, illustrations, or collages. They can be descriptive or abstract, cover the entire cover, or only part of it. Many books have no images at all but consist only of typographic elements.

The reader is used to seeing specific kinds of covers associated with certain types of books. For example, in biographies or children’s books, the choice of image can be simple and obvious: it relates directly from the book’s subject. The more abstract and hard-to-define the book’s content, the more creativity and imagination required to select the image and create the cover.

MATERIAL SELECTION

The first thing to decide is whether the book should be hardcover or have soft covers. Start by thinking about the book’s purpose: Handbooks often work best with soft covers such as novels or other fictional books in pocket format.

When it comes to books like fiction or photo books, hardcovers are appropriate. You can also add a protective cover, which initially served as a dust cover. If the book is to be used extensively and not kept in the bookshelf, such as cookbooks, a hardcover book without a cover is a better.

TEXT AND TYPOGRAPHY

Elements to be included on the cover are usually the author’s name, the book’s title, and the publisher. It is possible to convey the message solely through the design of the texts, and then no pictures are needed.

The cover also contains the book description and possibly text in the tabs. A barcode with ISBN is required for sales and logistics. Sometimes it can be challenging to place the barcode, but it is necessary for the book to be sold in the bookstore. The book’s back is also important: It is the part that is visible when the book is in the bookshelf and should, therefore, contain the book’s title.

FAILED COVERS

Sometimes the covers go wrong, and it can be due to different reasons. A common mistake is to decide quickly on a simple choice. The cover should give the reader what the book is about without making them familiar too much about book content. It is impossible to add everything about the content or book theme to the cover. The cover image does not have to tell everything but acts as a window and displays a viewpoint on the content.

A bad cover repeats clichés and becomes one of many. Sometimes the cover is misleading for purely marketing purposes. Then something shocking or otherwise used that arouses emotions but often has nothing to do with the book’s message.

CONCLUSION

As an author, designing a book cover taking into all above considerations may be difficult. I suggest you to use Beecovers book cover design application so that you don’t need to hassle and save a lot of time, they have tons of ready to use beautiful templates.

PS: SOME TIPS

Book Cover Templates

• Canva free book cover templates

• Placeit book cover template

• Freepik book cover templates (free with attribution)

Survey a targeted, relevant audience to get their ideas on your book covers

• Use Pickfu to ask your niche audience what they think (use code AUTHORS-WRITERS-POETS for 50% discount)

All the best

Marissa Mayer

The inspiration comes from a text I read on Facebook the other day about the American book industry. By now, has anyone who has any connection to the book industry noticed that the outbreak of Covid-19 affects the book industry? The question now is not whether any companies or industry leaders will go bankrupt, but preferably those who can survive the complete stop in many countries.

It is perhaps a little awkward to look up this comment on my first text where I warned that Corona would have adverse effects on the book industry. The big difference is spelled on Amazon, which is behind e-book revolution. Paper books account for the revenues of the major publishers, while e-books account for self-publishers’ revenues. 

The traditional publishers with the big 5 at the forefront have in practice a monopoly on paper books. They also sell audiobooks and e-books, but live on paper books that are sold both online and in bookstore chains. The large publishers’ sales of new titles have decreased over several years.

It is basically unprofitable as a micro-publisher to publish paper books and get them out in bookstores and libraries in the US. On the other hand, a plethora of self-publishers fully supports themselves by publishing e-books in the United States. Some serve well, but the exciting thing is how many can live solely on Amazon revenue (without filling up with extra jobs, lectures or scholarships). Nobody knows the exact distribution of market shares on Amazon today.

As I recall, Author Earnings showed that self-publishers dominated Amazon in terms of the number of copies sold and in revenue. Above all, there were many writers in what we call the midlist who supported themselves well that way. Also, it was clear that the big 5 lived on writers who have been in the business for more than ten or twenty years.

Writers can now put their eggs in several baskets. Many writers who have been in the industry for a long time are not either publishers or self-publishers, but both. Among successful American indie writers, it is common to publish the e-book edition at their own publisher and license the paper edition to a traditional publisher. That is, to make sure to distribute the risks.

Almost all bookstores closed in the United States. What is happening right now in the US is that most booksellers are closed to stop the spread of infection. So hardly any paper books are sold through the physical bookstore.

Someone may think that it is not so tricky if people can’t shop in a physical store because they can shop online instead. Well. Not in the US. Amazon has downgraded paper books due to the company wrestling with a combination of increased demand and sick leave. Orders for, for example, toilet paper increased by 186% and cough medicine 862% between February 20 and March 23 compared with the previous year.

No paper to print books. The challenges for publishers do not stop at getting sales for paper books. There is a lack of paper to print books this weekend in the United States. In addition, one of the largest printing companies has closed. The book industry in the United States cannot print, transport, or sell paper books.

Paper usually comes from China or Canada. One has not shipped anything in three months and high tariffs have been introduced from Canada. One of the large printing companies has closed again and much of the distribution is still standing.

In the UK, Italy and Spain, according to The Guardian (March 25), sales of paper books increased last week before Waterstones closed its 280 stores in the UK. It was especially thick classics that sold well.

The demand for puzzles is also good. German Ravensburger reported that on March 26, they sold ten times as many puzzles as a year earlier in the United States. The dilemma is that it is not so easy for them to meet demand.

Surprise: audiobooks in the US are declining. Beth Meacham also writes that audiobook sales have stopped for them as people have stopped commuting. 

In the title, I predicted dramatic effects on the US book market, except for self-publishers. Of course, it is challenging to predict what is going on, but there are a couple of reasons why the future for self-publishers looks brighter than for the rest of the book industry (agents, booksellers, publishers). In short, this is because the publisher’s business model is more focused on digital revenues and lower fixed expenses than the rest of the industry.

We simply get to live and see. But it feels like the writers who spread the risks and put their eggs in many baskets can sleep better at night.

All the best.

When writing a children’s book, it is good to have children around because they inspire you as a writer with their thoughts, fantasies and comments.

Maybe you’ve always dreamed of writing a children’s book. Many think it is easier to write children’s books than adult books, but many writers have been good at writing books for adults but have not been able to write children’s books. How to write a children’s book and what are aspects of it to consider?

Try to think from the children’s perspective because they do not always see the reality as it is. This way you can better understand what children like, think about and want to learn more about. A child lives in the present and rarely thinks of tomorrow. For children, many situations and experiences are new, which makes them eager and curious. A children’s story fulfills many functions; it can entertain the children, challenge, enlighten or answer questions.

It is important to decide in advance what age group you are writing for: image heavy 0–3 years, 3–6 years and chapter books: 6–9 years, 9–12 years, 12–15 years and so on. In picture books, images express at least as much information (or more) as the text. If you get help from an illustrator, it is vital to agree on what is to be conveyed through text and image.

As for the text, you, as a children’s book author, need to adapt your style and language level to the child reader. Subjects should also be adapted and viewed from the child’s point of view. One needs to take into account the child’s life experience, knowledge, and emotional maturity. The subject matter, language and storytelling must be linked. How scary, childish, cute or adult can you write for the age you are targeting?

Children lack the experience and associations that adults have accumulated throughout life, so be sure to explain easily and with pictures. The story should be told in straight chronology. Picture books are for the youngest and the older the children become, the more text it is in the books.

The younger the children, the fewer characters will be included in a story. A common beginner’s mistake is to have far too many people or to stack events on each other.

Read and learn from the already established writers within the age group you want to write. Analyze how they have built up their story and how the characters are embodied. Don’t forget the drama. Even the simplest children’s story follows a dramaturgical curve. Study the language carefully, how long the chapters are and what the books are about. This helps you put words into ideas when planning your children’s book writing. Above all, we advise you to read many children’s books, both classic and fairy tales, fiction and information books. The choice of children’s literature to read depends on the action in your particular children’s book.

Have fun writing and unleashing your imagination and creativity! Talk and socialize with children to familiarize yourself with how they think, study them as they play, or interview them about any topic they like. Talk to the child within you and try to remember what you thought about reading when you were a child. Creativity is major asset when it comes to writing children’s books.

Best, Melissa.

Romance is one of the most extensive literary genres in the Western world – significantly larger than poets – and is read and loved by millions of readers worldwide. More and more self-publishers are writing in this genre.

Nowadays, “romance” is often associated with love, but literary-historical romance can be about any emotion, not just love. However, it is typical that it contains a lot of emotions and a poetic language. Romance has varied in popularity and trend, but it has continued to exist in various art forms ever since it broke through. Today, fiction (in books and film) has an essential place in our lives. So romance becomes very relevant in our day.

A forbidden love, intense belonging, complicated obstacles, heartache, sparkling eroticism, emotions that go up and down as in a roller coaster that ends in great love and happiness, are typical features of a love novel. Romance is often about special people with particular destinies and love adventures. The characters are often mysterious. A successful romantic text should get the reader to escape from everyday life, escape from the present, and let other cultures inspire.

Many love novels are reminiscent of each other so being unique is extra important. Only the writer who develops his strategy and gives a personal touch to his love story will achieve success.

7 WRITING TIPS FOR YOUR LOVE STORY

1-Find the main theme of your love novel:

Whether it is realistic, fantastic, erotic or sad, this genre includes many subcategories or sub-genres. What kind of story is that? There must be a story. What should your story be about? Choose the environment your romance should play out in. The time can be present, historical or future. If you write a historical love novel, it will take a little research, if the events and the environment should correspond to the chosen time. So while it is a love novel, the subcategory is a historical story.

2-Define your target audience:

Before you start writing, think about which target audience you want to reach with your love novel. This is important because your writing style and events in the story should be tailored to your target audience. The more your readers get into your story, the more you will be able to catch and convince them.

Therefore, you must think about what language style you should use, what age you are targeting or what experiences they can recognize and understand. If your love novel contains a lot of eroticisms, the text should be age-appropriate.

3-Sketch the most essential aspects of your plot:

Plot contains conflicts and turning points in a dramatic curve until the end. It is up to you how detailed you want to write, but it is used as a basis during your story’s writing process and will help you develop the flow of story. Then think about where your story will take place, what romantic cities will come into play, and any potential obstacles your characters must overcome to finally reach a, possibly, happy ending.

4-Find the right environment when writing:

Each author has their habits and individual needs as they write. While some writers are very structured and spend their time writing their manuscript for a certain amount of time each day while continuing your everyday life as usual, others retreat to their realm over a long period to concentrate exclusively on writing. Many romance writers love to write in a romantic, relaxing and quiet environment. Discover for yourself what environment you feel most comfortable in and where you can best focus on writing.

5-Bring your characters to life:

To create a realistic character, it takes more than one name, specific look or age – the subtleties give life to your characters and awaken the emotions of your readers. Develop your own, individual life story and personal characteristics for each of your characters. The more authentic your characters are, the more your readers can sympathize with them. Don’t hesitate to take inspiration from your environment!

6-Expressive adjectives for every emotion:

A good love novel stimulates the imagination, speaks to the senses and awakens the reader’s emotions, but how to achieve it? Using expressive adjectives and rich vocabulary, you can express feelings and descriptions in words. Find suitable adjectives for what you want to express. Before you start writing your novel, write down your various adjectives as detailed on paper that expresses the emotions and give the idea of ​​your characters or situation you want to create.

7-Decorate your words with beautiful book design:

Our final tip is less related to your love story’s actual writing and more related to the book’s design and appearance. An appealing book design begins with a beautiful cover and continues with the book’s setting of the insert. Decorate your love story with an attractive design. Choose your font carefully so that it matches the impression you want to give your readers.

Also, do not forget to plan the font size, line spacing, chapter headings etc. All this together creates the individual reading experience and the atmosphere that you want to give your readers.

Best, Melissa Mayer…

Fantasy is a genre that is growing stronger in popularity in the literature, both among adults and children. Many want to immersed with a world that does not exist in everyday life.

Maybe you are one of those who devour the Lord of the Ring trilogy or the Game of Thrones books. You write and fantasize away among the essence of folk beliefs, sayings, invented worlds and mystery. No matter what genre you write, there is a lot of work behind the writing and it takes time, but writing fantasy is a lot of fun, because you can find stories that are far from reality.

Writing fantasy is a bit different from other writing genres. You create your world and have complete freedom to decide what happens in it. You create your invented creatures, name them and let them follow your rules and regulations.

The notion of good and evil powers or forces interacting and fighting each other has attracted readers at all times. It is usually the struggle between these two opposites that is the driving force of fantasy.

Fantasy is the modern version of ancient myths and fairy tales with their wizards, dwarves, witches, and protagonists talking animals and fairies. Most often, the protagonist, who is almost always the hero, has a mission or various tasks to perform. The story usually focuses on how the hero reaches his final goal and what he is confronted with on the road. Many fantasy books contain two or more different worlds in which the characters move, interacting with each other somehow. If you are thinking about writing fantasy but have trouble getting started, we will give you some tips.

CREATE YOUR HISTORY

To get inspiration in your writing, we recommend reading about myths, legends, fables and folktales. For example, many of old north European god stories have inspired writers, at all times.

Long walks in the woods and nature can help you evoke and imagine various wild fairy tales. You might even fantasize about meeting and talking to different creatures to create dialogues in your book. Something that is always a good source of inspiration when writing is music. Music brings your imagination to life and for the creation of monsters and evil creatures or maybe elves and heroes.

1-We recommend that you write down all ideas as you come up with them, even though they may not be related to each other right then. It can be supporting words, dialogues or short sentences. These can later be put in order and used to build your story. Ask simple questions to yourself about your ideas or inventive events such as “why?”, “When?” and how?”. So always bring a paper and pen to write down your ideas quickly.

2-Begin to think about which of your ideas are related and which may be in the same chapter. Try to establish a connection between them. If the order does not convince you, move them. How should the story begin? What is the highlight? How will it end? Plan a chronology for your story. At the same time, start editing and creating a table of contents.

3-How many characters should you include in your story? Slowly work on what people you have included in your story and what they look like. Make them alive by assigning them background and why they are who they are. Are they men or women? Has something special happened to them? Does he or she have any fear of something? Where did they get their powers from (if they have any)? What kind of clothes do they wear? Maybe to create obstacles in their lives. What does the protagonist have and why does he or she want to solve it? Make characters exciting to the reader, but don’t tell them all at once. It is better to give some clues now and trigger curiosity.

4-It’s time to start building your fantasy world. We concentrate on the environmental description. How to create a new world? A world that, in the eyes of the reader, should be perceived as so real that we are trapped and live in it. If you are planning to create a world from scratch, start with simple lines and oceans, lakes, rivers, mountains. Then you can add strange factors to your world that is not common in our world. When does your story take place? Are there special rules in your world? Is it forbidden to do or say certain things in your fantasy world? Who lives where? This is a significant and vital part of your story, so take plenty of time to write and think through everything.

5-Pictures say more than a thousand words, they say. Appealing illustrations and pictures illuminate and reinforce messages in texts, make the book visually appealing and enhance the reading experience. If you plan to include images or illustrations in your book, you should start thinking about this. A professional illustrator can always help you create your characters if you can’t do it yourself. You can also use the many different websites available today, where you can buy pictures or download them for free.

6-Now you know about what your story should look like, so now you can concentrate on the writing itself. Start making real chapters in your story. Should you write in the first or third-person perspective? Will you be writing detailed descriptions of your characters and surroundings to make the story more personal to your readers, or rather make brief descriptions? Create “Cliffhangers” at the end of some chapters to give the reader the feeling that he or she cannot stop reading, but wants to continue because it is so exciting.

When you have finished writing your work – let others read it! Receiving feedback and comments is very helpful and it can improve your story. If several people have read your script and have shared opinions, you should take their feedback and advice seriously. It is often the case that you have to rewrite parts of the script to achieve good quality. You must have patience all the way and believe in your history.

All the best, Melissa Mayer.

PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK

When your draft script is finished editing, it’s time to finish the book and make it accessible to others. Of course, it can move over the phases and you can start thinking about this earlier in the process so that you are more prepared. But it is only now that you have a text that has been sufficiently reviewed for publishing.

Publishing options:

Should you publish the book yourself or send it to a publisher? Today there are many simple publishing options; everyone can publish their book. You do not need to pass a publisher’s approval, print more than a few copies or invest large sums. You often need to do the work yourself anyway and invest some financially. There are now many smaller players in publisher market that offer you cooperation and sharing the costs.

Self-publishing on online stores is also great option. Read our blog posts for more detailed information on best practices. You can also download our Indie Authors Checklist that can give great insights.

Marketing and launch:

Marketing begins long before your book is published, sooner you star your book marketing is better. Think about your target audience and where they are. Marketing on Snapchat to a young audience is rarely worthwhile; they are available on other social platforms. Create an author page on Facebook and start a blog, those are very easy and cost effective but can be very helpful in promoting your book.

Remember to start with the platforms you can dedicate your time. Social channels require effort, you need to create content, upload and engage with your audience. Launch and release parties are of course, important marketing and sales activity. Plan carefully, invite relevant guests, sign books and celebrate your incredible journey!

Sales:

Books have different lifetimes. When the book is new, it is the hottest. Start selling already before launch. Don’t be afraid to talk about your book and have a YouTube video that you talk about your book. Your imagination is the limit on how you can promote your book.

Emptiness:

The last phase of a project often enters a period of emptiness. You’ve spent a lot of time with your script, your characters and now you have to release it. It can give a feeling of emptiness, sadness and fear. Fear of what people will think and it will fail.

There is no magic trick here to overcome those common feelings you just have to keep moving. You continue to sell and market. You can now start to look ahead too, time to write the next book?

All the best, S. Kohen

EDIT SCRIPT DRAFT FOR A READABLE BOOK

When your draft script is ready, it is probably not ready to send to a publisher or self-publish. Regardless of how you worked in the two previous phases of the writing process (part 1 & part 2), you have some editing work left to do before your script is complete.

How much work you have left depends. If you have worked a lot with your characters, you may notice that the design of characters and dialogues feels natural, interesting, readable. Therefore, in the editing phase, it is time to check that the text has everything to be published as a finished book. There is a lot to think about; here are some steps that contribute to the quality in your script.

Read your script:

Now it’s time to read your script from beginning to end. Read it as if it were a finished book. Note where you find gaps, where you want to add and remove text. Prepare that you will get to hang out with quite a few friends during this phase to make them read too. You may want to go through it digitally at first, but also print out scripts on paper and read with the pen in hand. Each time you change your way of reading, new things become visible to you. It can be from digital to paper or change fonts for example.

Check out the draft:

Once you have read through the script and changed the most obvious, there are some important things to check out. Check out drama, scenes, design, environments, characters and their developmental curves. Check if all threads are followed up or if there are loose ones and gaps. It is difficult to keep track of a larger body of text and many parameters at the same time. It makes it easier to stay focused on one thing at a time, such as choosing a perspective or dialogue for a review.

Take help:

No matter how much you try to read your text objectively, you will become blind to your text. One tip for creating objective reading is to leave the script lying and resting between the readings. However, it will take a long time for you to let it rest months between each editing session. Therefore, seek help from the eyes of others.

Experienced readers can read your script and give you feedback on the text. You can find test readers among reading friends, groups on Facebook, Twitter and also on various website who authors and readers review other’s work. Take the help from a professional reader too. Usually, you do not have as many friends who have the knowledge to read scripts professionally. Hire a professional who can read your script and provide feedback on how the script can be improved.

Spending too much effort with linguistic changes, grammar and spelling is a waste of time before you know what exactly should be left or not. Besides, when you give priority to what really matters it is easy to feel productive because you have done things, but if you do not benefit from them, productivity is an illusion.

All the best, S. Kohen

WRITING A DRAFT

Once you’ve completed the preparation phase, it’s time to start writing your draft script. If you have done your homework well, you know where to start; otherwise, you can start by reading the first part about preparing for writing a book.

In the creative phase, we write our story; we cover our synopsis in words, paragraphs, chapters and scenes. There are many tips on how to do this. My main advice is to find the best way for you. You can still be open to adjustments that can help you even more. You need always to look further and try new things. No tips fit everyone, so test yourself until you find what works for you.

Do not strive for perfection:

Writing without friction is about letting go of all thoughts about requirements and performance. Just write down what should be written down to get to the story with the words that are available to you right now. Write as if no one should read. The advantage of this is that you have time to write down the story before you forget something and it also has a tendency to skip performance requirements, which favors creativity. In the editing phase, you can always change and add everything that is needed to make your book script more readable.

Book time in the calendar:

You don’t have time to write is the most common excuse I hear for not writing – even though you want to. You perceive time as a scarcity. It is not. You have time. It’s about how you choose to prioritize and use it. Sometimes it may be worthwhile use some small tricks to get yourself into writing habits, such as adding meetings with yourself in your calendar. It is usually much easier to do what is on the schedule than otherwise.

Keep in touch with your plan always:

The plan you made for your script during the preparation phase is your best friend on the process. See it as a living document, a creative process. It is your handrail that you can navigate and you can update it as your script takes new paths. Because it will likely take new routes during the process – the path to a finished script draft is rarely fixed.

Trust and endurance:

You need a good deal of confidence and persistence when writing a book script. You will experience different emotions and all are not pleasant. Sometimes you doubt yourself and you think you will never finish it. Calm down, it happens to all of us. You cannot navigate in creative processes without all these emotions and stages. Let them take the time it takes, think it will settle if you just keep going.

All the best, S. Kohen