Self Publishing Your Books

We’ve all heard that lies are stronger when they have traces of truth. Well, the same mindset applies to writing too. Readers get more immersed and grounded in stories that contain traces of what they already know. Consider Harry Potter: a world that JK Rowling imagined into our existing world. When talking about imagination in writing, we have to give Rowling a lot of credit. The world she concocted sparks the imagination of all ages, multiple generations, and inspired some of the most popular tourist experiences in the world. Yet, did she imagine it all herself? For the most part, yes. However, Rowling built on a lot of pre-existing concepts. In fact, many of these concepts actually ground her story to make it believable. Let’s look at a few. The basilisk Originally, in Greek mythology, the basilisk was a north african serpent whose breath withered plants and killed whatever it touched. In the middle ages, the basilisk was described as a rooster with a snake’s tail . Another middle a...

 When I first started self publishing, I figured there was no way I'd ever design my own covers. Cover artists know so many things including: The size of cover your book will need depending on which publisher you use (KDP, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, Blurb, etc.) The colour edits and variants you'll need to get your colours printing right How to make sure the text on the back of your book is legible And so many other things. I'd swore I'd never design my own cover, until... Perusing Adobe stock images, I came across the perfect image that was exactly what I wanted for my book cover. Now, consider this: I'd already spent $350USD per book cover for the three books in my series; hired a professional designer and everything. People enjoyed them, they showed my characters well... but something was never quite right. My fault, not the artist's; she gave me exactly what I asked for. Was it crazy to re-start on my own and scrap that $1,000+ I'd spent on cover art? Ini...

Oh my gosh, writers. Could there please please please be one page that tells you the settings to use in InDesign to get your files approved in Ingramspark? At least, that's what I begged Google while tugging out my hair. After hours of trial and error, here are the freaking settings for InDesign exports to Ingramspark. (With details for converting your cover image with Adobe Acrobat at the end!) Your content Document units First, before you give yourself a headache looking up picas conversions online and everything, set your document's units to inches. Go to Indesign > Preferences > Units & Increments . Set the Width and height to use inches. Document bleed Go to File > Document setup . Set your bleed to the following: Bleed Top: 0.125 in Bottom: 0.125 in Inside: 0 in Outside: 0.125 in Document export Now, to the simple juice of this article: exporting your document. Go to File > Export (or [control/command]+[E]). Set the Adobe PDF Preset to [PDF/X-3:2002] . Le...