Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but how do you take the 100,000 or so of them in a book and consolidate them into a single image? Book covers help readers instantly decide if a a book is meant for them. After all, a single image is a lot quicker to digest than 150+ pages of text.

So how do you make sure that a cover captures the soul of a book and intrigues the right reader to pick it off the shelf (whether physical or digital)? Start with genre. This article explores how to design book covers for different genres of literature, so when your book is judged by its cover, it’ll come up a winner....

Robin Good writes:

Beacon is a free web app which allows you to import, format and customize your best blog articles into a professional-looking PDF ebook. It is also possible to select among different formatting styles, fonts, color schemes and to add new text, pages and images.

The final PDF can be saved and downloaded and you will also have mobile-version friendly web version (which can be hosted on your own domain) of it also available for distribution. Analytics offer the ability to see who read or downloaded your ebook.

Direct integration with WordPress (plugin) and Hubspot. Free version available (includes a Beacon logo in your publications).Paid version from $9/mo (1 unbranded ebook/mo)

Pricing info:  http://www.beacon.by/pricing 

My commen t: Great, easy-to-use platform to easily create ebooks without hiring a graphic designer. 

Try it out now: http://www.beacon.by/...

For many authors, self-publishing is a first option instead of a backup to traditional publishing. Two years ago I broke down the costs to self-publish a high-quality book. The costs covered how much a traditional publisher typically spends on a book.

The book publishing industry is one of the last industries to go digital, and things are constantly in flux. What worked yesterday might not work next week.

Putting together a quality book involves not just writing it, but getting it edited and formatted, designing a cover, and having a marketing strategy around it.

The rise of new tools, platforms, and new entrants to the publishing space have made it even easier and faster to get a book out into the world. As a follow-up to my first piece, I’ve written a piece on how to publish on a budget....