Orna Ross, from the Alliance of Independent Authors, said in a podcast I listened to the other day, and I paraphrase: “Stephen King has an editor. Why would an indie think s/he didn’t need an editor? It’s the biggest mistake an indie author can make.” Or something along those lines. She, with others associated with Alli, have a lot of informational podcasts. You can watch their videos on YouTube, or find them in your podcast app on your smartphone.
I’m an indie author, and I had a few issues with this. First of all, Stephen King doesn’t pay for his own editor. Not out of his own pocket, and certainly not at a loss like most of us just starting out. Secondly, when he puts out a book, a million people read it, and it more than likely will get turned into a movie. Thirdly, because we are one the outside, we don’t know how much of the editor’s advice Mr. King actually takes. Does he take plot advice? When he’s told one of his characters is reading flat, does he fix that character, or does he tell his editor to shove it?
Comparing us to Stephen King didn’t help her make her point.
Or did it?
Indie authors are in need of an editor more than probably anyone. Especially if that book is their first. Or even their second, or their third.
There are different editors out there; they range in duties from helping you plot before you even write your book (that would be more like a writing coach, but developmental editors have their say in your plot) to simply proofreading it before publication. These types of editors cost hundreds of dollars, and if you’re told you need even more than one of these kinds of editors, it can be intimidating.
I’ve always advocated that an indie author do as much as they can on their own. This isn’t just about being cheap–it’s good business. You are not only an independent author when you write a book, you need to be a self-publisher if you want people to read it. You need to know what you’re doing so you can make good choices for your business. Especially if you’re planning on doing this for the long haul.
(And you can forget about special treatment from a publishing house if you want to get traditionally published. They ask your book be as close to publishable as possible to cut editing costs. It’s not unheard of to hire an editor to edit your manuscript before you query.)
The bottom line is you need someone else to look at your stuff before you publish it. We all learn something new about writing on a daily basis, so your writing will never come out perfectly, and I don’t believe a writer can spot all their own issues. (We all learn, we never stop, so maybe Stephen King does listen to his editor.) That’s where an editor comes in.
That’s not to say you can’t substitute. If you are in a writing group, your critique partner could stand in for a developmental editor.
Maybe your friend who has an English degree and can diagram a sentence with her eyes closed can read your manuscript and look for such things such as subject/verb agreement, faulty sentence structure, and correct word usage.
Maybe your best friend is a prolific reader and can read for typos.
If you can take the criticism as how it’s supposed to be meant, not an attack on your writing, but rather an honest attempt to help you improve your work, you can learn a lot from the editors and “editors” in your life.
When you compare writing a book to having a baby–nothing could be truer. You don’t birth a baby on your own. You have an OB doctor, nurses, a doula perhaps, your partner, your mother to give you support. You don’t have a baby alone, and you don’t write and publish a book alone, either.
As for actually paying an editor, a real one who knows what they are doing, that is a decision left entirely between you and your pocketbook.
I use a paid editor, but she doesn’t do it as her day job. She’s a fabulous writer, and she’s a fabulous editor. I’ve learned a lot from her feedback, and my writing has improved a lot over the past year. But she’s busy with her own projects and a full-time job, so I’m doubting she’s going to stick with me and my writing career as she is trying to get her own off the ground. I’ll need to find someone else to edit the contemporary romance series I’m going to be publishing in the coming months.
I’ve learned a lot from beta readers and my editor. I’ve also started to read self-editing books to help me recognize my mistakes and cut unnecessary words. I’ve started outlining so my plots are tighter and there’s less chance of plot-holes. I’ve started doing character workups so I can get to know my characters before I write about them. This saves me from writing flat characters.
You are writing a book–a lot of what an editor can and will do for you, you can take into your own hands as you actively learn your craft.
An editor can help you put your best work into the world.
I’ll be honest. I usually don’t feel like a real writer. I struggle with this on a day to day basis, even though most days I do something in the form of writing, or “writerly” as we like to say. Right now I’m elbow-deep in editing my 2015 Nano project (4th time’s the charm right?); I’m also 40,000 words into the next book in that series. I’ve also just edited for someone. I blog (obviously), which (obviously again) is writing. I listen to podcasts about writing and publishing. I read about writing every chance I get, and yeah, my library is pretty long.
I was chatting with my friend Gareth Young, (find his blog here and his Amazon author page here) about this very topic not long ago. He asked me when people ask me what I do, do I tell them I’m a writer or do I tell them what I do for my day job? This was over Facebook Messenger so he couldn’t see my jaw drop, but it did. Because only two days before that I had gotten a trim at my salon and of course, the stylist asked me what I did for work. As Gareth pointed out, that could have been a perfect time to tell her about my book, what I was working on, tell her about my email list, and given her a card. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, made a sale.
But I did none of those things.
Why not?
I’ll tweet to more than 8,000 people that I’m a writer, but I can’t tell my hairstylist I wrote a book. And that it’s for sale. And that she can go on Amazon and buy it.
I thought about this for a long time, and I realized it’s because I only have one book out. Unfortunately, I do not consider that enough proof to say I’m a writer to anyone in my real life.
But I am a writer. I have 150,000 words in the hands of an editor right now. I’m editing a 77,000-word novel that will be released later this year. I’m writing the second book in that series, and I’m 40,000 words into it.
Yet I don’t feel like a writer. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. On any given day I can vent my frustration with normal everyday activities that need to be done: cleaning the bathroom, going to the grocery store, scooping cat litter. Things that only remind me that I am not writing, therefore not publishing, therefore not adding to my proof that yes, the hour or two I can squeak out of my schedule does add up to something people will be able to buy and eventually add to my backlist of books.
With all this in black and white, I’ve come to realize that I need to separate my actual writing from what I am doing to build my platform. While I may be doing well with my writing, my platform still needs a lot of work, and it will always need time and attention.
So whether you write all day only to put it in a file and slip it under your bed, or you scribble a poem on a cocktail napkin to leave for the bartender, or you’re editing a 4-book high fantasy series, you are a writer.
What you do with it is up to you, but that does not define who you are.
Joanna Penn in her book How to Market a Book (you can find it here) asks you to define your version of success. People define success differently. Maybe it’s publishing one book, maybe it’s having a successful blog. Maybe it really is just finding that one hour a day you can sit with a cup of coffee and your characters.
Success to me will be having a decent backlist I can promote. Maybe enough sales to drop to part-time work so I can write more.
But I have to remember that my definition of success and my definition of being a writer can be exclusive of each other. They have to be, or somewhere along the line, I’ll get discouraged.
Platform-building takes years.
Writing and publishing a book or novella or short story can take as little as a couple of weeks.
My idea of success is where these two things meet in the middle.
That’s great, you say, but paperbacks don’t sell, the cover looks too complicated, and I don’t want to do that right now; I would just prefer to publish on Kindle and be done with it. What do I need for a cover then?
If you’re not interested in doing CreateSpace, then you’ll need to do the cover, yes, and it will just be the front, or rather, the picture customers will see on Amazon. You’ll still need to write the blurb for the product information, but you won’t have to worry about it being put on the back of a paperback.
Open a Word document, make a text box of your chosen trim size, being 5×8, 6×9, whatever. I advise you to do it this way in case you decide down the road to offer a paperback after all, then all you will need to add is the spine and back cover and adjust the page layout (remember all that math . . . yeah . . . ).
When you’re done, saving it in a photo format can be a bit tricky, however, if you’re doing it in Word because there’s no option to save as a jpeg, jpg, or a tiff file, the only files being accepted by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). They don’t take a PDF like CS does.
What I did when I made the cover for Under Lock and Key, was after I made the cover, I used the Snipping Tool and “snipped it” and saved it as a jpeg. After I did that, I ran it through GIMP and made sure it was 300 dpi. Always make sure your images are 300 dpi or dots per inch, so your picture is clear online.
Cover basics are the same for Kindle: you want your cover to look pleasing, your name and title clear as a small thumbprint for a potential reader to see.
I made a quick one for my e-reader story using a photo I here found so I didn’t have to pay money for a blog post.
This is a screen shot of the cover I made in Word. There is a lot wrong with it. The title isn’t legible that small in that font, and my name is too dark to be seen. But I’ll leave it this way since this is only an example. Plus the bottom of the Y is cut off (it seems like I like doing that) so you would want to adjust that text box. 😛
Now use the Snipping Tool:
And be as precise as you can. If you get some of the white in there, you can crop it out with GIMP when you check it for dpi:
Save it as a JPEG file in the Save As Type:
Right now it’s going to save as a PNG, so you need to change it to JPEG using the down arrow on the right:
That will save it in the file you need. Now you can upload it into GIMP and crop it if you need to, if you accidently snipped some white, and make sure it’s 300 dpi. That’s all you need to do for a cover for your Kindle:
Make it in Word
Snip It
Save it as a JPEG
Run it through GIMP.
Export it under the Save AS so the change in dpi sticks
My picture was only 72 dpi, so I changed it to 300. I exported it to save the changes and this is it:
And that’s all you need. It’s a lot less involved than doing a book cover, and there are a lot of authors who only offer an e-reader option for this reason. Under Lock and Key is a short story, so I didn’t do a paperback for it. But I like paperbacks, and I will probably always offer them to my readers if I can. It might be an expense because I do purchase my own ISBN numbers, but it’s a personal choice.
You can make your cover as simple or as involved as you want. You can buy a template, hire an artist, whatever you choose to do.
When you offer both paperback and Kindle, the thumbnail that shows up is for your Kindle. It’s easy to make a new cover, for the Kindle, but if you’re going to do that you have to decide if you’re going to change the cover in CreateSpace. You don’t to make your readers angry thinking they’re going to get your new cover but they get a completely different one in paperback because you didn’t change it in CreateSpace. I like to keep all my things the same. When I redid the cover for 1700, I changed both. I think it’s courteous that way. I don’t want my readers not to trust me for any reason.
I think that’s it for Kindle Covers. I only need to tell you how to format your Kindle file, and that’s up next!
I started this publishing series eight months ago. Sorry about that. But in that time I’ve published a book (two novellas together), wrote 150,000 more words (in the form of 6 novellas that will be published together), and fixed 1700’s typos inside and the cover. I have also started fixing my 2015 NaNo project just so I can say it’s done and move on.
When I started this series, it was my intention to tell you how to publish a quality paperback cheaply and easily. I think in this recap you’ll see I did that. Even now, I am so tired of hearing that you need to pay for this, pay for that, to publish a quality book.
Indie publishing went from, “It’s not a real way to publish” to “It is a real way if you pay for everything.” No one can afford to pay for the ISBN number, the editing, the formatting, the file conversions. And believe me, there are people who will do it all for you. For a price. But the sad part is if you are willing to take a few minutes (okay, hours), read a few books, you don’t need to pay for anything.
Let the recap of eight months begin.
You wrote a book! Congratulations. Let it sit for a few weeks, even a few months, write something else, read it again. Have a few people read it. Ask them to look for plot holes, flat characters, scenes that don’t move the story along. If you use Word, download Grammarly. It’s a decent checker for things I miss or wouldn’t think to look for. Buy the Hemingway App for more help ($20.00 is a decent investment). Use anything you can get your hands on to make your work as clear and as typo-free as possible.
Grab a trad-pubbed book and copy the front and back matter. You need the copyright page, the acknowledgments. The title page. Dedication page. The author page. You’re in charge of all it.
Get your author picture taken. I want to see you sitting in a cafe with a cup of coffee in your hands, smiling. Because you just wrote a book, and you’re going to publish it, and you are proud of it, and you’re going to own it, dammit! Have your best friend take it and buy her a cup of coffee for her trouble.
Buy your ISBN or don’t. At the beginning, I leaned toward buying your own, protect your work and all that. But if you’re not sure what your publishing plan is, (like one a year, if that) take the free one CreateSpace gives you. No harm done.
Choose the size of your book. If you’re writing smut you’re not going to be able to choose the smut-sized trim sold in Walmart. But choose the size you want, the color (cream or white) pages you want.
Based on that, download the free template from CreateSpace so you can format the inside of your book. CreateSpace wants you to have an easy experience, a good experience, so you keep using them. The template is easy. Download it, copy and paste your manuscript into it. You don’t need to copy the template exactly. Their template comes with a Table of Contents I do not use. Change the font if you want, maybe the size. And please make a couple different copies of your MS. If something goes horribly wrong, well, that would bad. Play around with the template before you copy and paste your MS into it. See what you can change and what will mess up if you touch it.
Make your template for your cover. If you make changes to the number of pages in your MS, you’ll need to recalculate the spine width and change the paper layout dimensions. I forgot to do that when messing around with 1700. I changed the spine text box but not the paper layout. That’s probably why I had some of my spine color wrapped on my front cover.
Write your blurb. Maybe you already did this. Have one of your beta readers read it, make sure it sounds good. I gave you some resources how to write a good one. It takes a little bit of help, though, so don’t be afraid to ask for it.
I wrote about your cover a lot. Remember, if you don’t like the thought of doing your own cover, don’t. Use the CreateSpace Cover Creator, or buy a cover that’s already done. Hire someone. This series was to help you do it as cheaply as possible. People *do* judge a book by its cover, so if this is something you don’t want to tackle, I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of choices out there.
CS takes a PDF of your cover (in the Save As option on Word, PDF is a choice). Submit that, submit your interior, and you’re done. They say 24 hours, but it only takes them 12 to get back to you and tell you if it’s approved or not. Remember the flattening warning you’re going to get. That’s okay. Order the proof, check it over. When I got my second proof for 1700 I read it like I was reading anyone and looked for typos. Spend some time on it, because the proof is exactly what people will be getting when they order it. It takes about 5-10 days to get the proof in the mail. If you want your paperback and the Kindle to be live at the same time, don’t go through the Kindle stuff until your paperback is ready to go. Kindle only takes 5 hours to approve your files. You can have them live on the same day. I had trouble with CS so my Kindle version was live for a couple weeks before my paperback was available. That’s up to you and how you want to do it.
And that’s it. I recommend Chris McMullen’s book and you can find it here. He explains a lot of the technical stuff with the template and he goes into Word a lot more than I do. There’s a lot of tutorials and YouTube videos out there. When I started eight months ago, I didn’t know as much as I do now. Indie publishing is a continual learning process because things change. I’ve learned to read only things that were written in 2016 or even more recently because old information may not help.
If you need any more help, drop me a question. I’m sure you can Google the answer probably faster than I can answer it, but I’ll be going through this whole thing in a couple more months when Summer Secrets is ready to be published. I’ve come a long way with doing covers in Word, and I’m confident that with the patience I’ve learned, the tricks I’ve taught myself playing with the CS interior template, and the tutorials I’ve watched about picture manipulation, the process will go smoothly. And I hope yours does too.
At the beginning of this publishing series, I promised you could make a nice cover with a picture and some words. I got a little fancy with the cover we just went over, and if you’re reading this all the way through and got discouraged, I apologize. I’ll show you how to make a nice cover now, just a picture and some words. That’s it. I promise.
Start out with a new Word document. Go back to the formula for the paper set up. If your book is going to be 5×8 with cream paper, your page set up calculations will be:
Inches: 5 + 5 + spine + .25 (bleed) = what you need.
A 334-page book with cream pages will have a spine of .835 inches. (334 x 0.0025).
5 + 5 + .835 + .25 = 11.085
Height is always easier because you’re not doubling anything. So the height for the page set up would be 8 inches plus .25 for bleed.
8 + .25 = 8.25
The paper layout will look like this:
Word rounded down, and I’m not sure how that affects our calculations. I would guess it’s insignificant or Word wouldn’t do it.
Follow the rest of the directions in the blog post where I typed out the list of steps.
You’ll have your handy template that looks like this:
This template is for a 5×8 trim size with cream colored pages. Number of pages, 334. (A nice, long book. :)) (FYI, You’ll always have an even number of pages because a page has two sides.)
The problem with the picture I like is that it’s square, not rectangle, so when I put it into the template, it stretches. Stretchy is not the same as stabby; sometimes stabby can be a good thing.
If you don’t mind she looks a bit stretched out or you swear you can’t tell, that’s your prerogative. I’m sure down the road it will bother you, so you might as well do it right the first time. I guess I don’t need to tell you, to avoid this you can always find a rectangle picture. There are plenty out there and CanStock will even filter square pictures out in your searches.
Using the Crop feature, I cropped it using the Aspect Ratio, portrait 2:3.
Fix the dimensions of the picture so it fits into the 5×8 box.
It brought them closer, but that’s okay.
So this is what I have so far:
I downloaded a new font. I used the same picture on the back, but flipped it and lightened it. I did forget to mention in the last post that you probably want to put the price above the ISBN box. That way if you do happen to have a book sale of some kind, you can have the price on there, and if you put it on discount, customers can see that it is.
If you think the cover picture is too bold for the white spine and the back cover, you can lighten up the cover edges a bit like this:
You can do what you want with the blank space by the ISBN box. Maybe your author picture, maybe your imprint picture. Whatever. But I did what I promised you from the beginning, I gave you a lovely cover with just one picture, no fancy picture effects you need to learn how to do. Oh, wait, take all the lines off. I swear, there is always something.
And don’t worry about the cursor. That will go away when you save it as a PDF to submit it to CS. Also, remember not to freak out if this is all you have and you want the Kindle cover too. CS will offer it to you, and you can download it.
I think this is it for covers. I’ll post a recap of everything I’ve talked about then I’ll tell you how to format your file for Kindle.
I’m sick today, so I’m going to cover your back cover rather than try to edit. Hopefully, this is a bit easier than looking for typos and fixing head-hopping. One can hope.
Where did we leave off? Oh, here:
So what we have here is a decent cover, plain spine. Ultimately, you want your back cover to blend in with what you’ve already got. Despite what Mr. Smith says, people, at some point, will be holding your book in their hands. Maybe you can get your book into an indie bookstore, or you can sweet talk Barnes and Noble into hosting a book signing. Even if you’re just going to give your book away on GoodReads, it’s important to take a bit of time on your back cover.
Is this the right picture? I don’t know. I’m sick and I’ve changed laptops as well. Anyway, so it might not be the exact picture (downloaded from Pixabay), but it will work. You are never cemented into what you’ve got going on. You can change your mind anytime, so if you come across a picture you like more, by all means, use it. What we’re going to do with it will make it work, even if it isn’t the exact same thing. You’ll probably want everything to mesh, though, so at this point, since I don’t have the other picture I used I would have to redo the cover. Not a bad thing, but ugh. Anyway. Let’s put the ISBN box back where it needs to be so we know how much room we have to work with.
The little box is to make sure you know where your ISBN box belongs. You can take off the outlines for both, and take off the Fill for the little box.
There. So, some people put their author photo and a small bio on the back. Lots of trad-pubbed books do that, so if you want to go through the trouble, you are welcome to. I didn’t for 1700. For curiosity’s sake, let’s try.
That looks alright. You would need to adjust the picture and the boxes to how you like them. You can’t move your ISBN box. It’s where CS wants it to be. Also, remember you can’t get too close to the edge of the cover; you don’t want anything to accidently be chopped off in the bleed. All I did was create text boxes and used Fill With Picture for the author photo and took off the outline for both. I chose No Fill for the wording because the black looks fine on the silver.
All that’s left is the blurb, and if you were interested in some kind of large tag line, put that on there as well. I will because I like the idea of it.
I had to use another text box, and I just took out the Fill and Outline. If you tried to type in the big text box that is used for the back cover outline, the text will actually disappear under the photo and you won’t be able to see it. I also don’t want my cover to be a hodge-podge of font, so I’m going to stick with the fonts I used on the cover and the spine.
That pretty much sums up the back cover. You might think the spine looks boring now, but your book won’t be spread out like this and I don’t think the full white spine will scream at you then as it does now. You could always fill in the spine text box with the grey and white light picture we used on both covers, and if you didn’t like it you could always get rid of it. A book’s cover is a huge experiment and it takes a lot of tries before you get to something you like.
In fact, being the perfectionist I am, I don’t like guessing if I used the same photo on the front and back so I’m going to change it.
I used the same font, pictures, and no, I hadn’t used the same grey and white light picture, so it’s the same now. I used three different text boxes for the title font so I could move the words around. I used a smaller font for the “TO” and I stuck to the same two fonts for all the words on the front cover, spine, and back cover to lend consistency to the entire book.
This is a cute little pic of all the text boxes we used to create the cover. These are why you’ll get the error message in the CS email when you submit your cover. In Word, there’s no way to flatten these. CS will do it for you and that’s not a big deal. In GIMP, if you create your cover in that software, there is a way to do it. Being I’ll only make two, maybe three covers a year (if I’m lucky) I’m not going to bother. You’ll also get the same message for the interior if you happen to have any pictures on the inside like scene spacers, or if you have your author photo in the back as well. Maybe you’ll have pictures of your other books, that will also cause CS to give you the error message. That is one of the few things CS will fix for you, so as long as you know the cause of the error, you don’t need to worry about it. The important thing is you like your proof when it comes back.
There is one more thing I’m going to have to you do; I never had a problem with 1700, but I’ve heard others have. Delete the outside text box lines. I’ve heard they show up. They didn’t on mine but better to be safe than sorry.
There. All the lines for the spine and cover are gone. You have a gorgeous cover, and it was free (besides paying for the pictures, anyway). All it takes is a little time and patience. It’s fun to mess around, but if you get discouraged, look for a tutorial and learn what you want to do with your pictures. I’m hoping you crank out more than one or two a year, but if you can’t, that means you have plenty of time to learn photo manipulation to get what you want.
I gotta go blow my nose, so I’ll chat with you later!
This post was updated 8/17/2025. It kept getting hits but I offered no real advice since the original was written back in 2017 and I had no idea what I was doing.
Writing a blurb is hard. It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the querying/publishing process. It’s probably why this blog post is still getting hits seven years after I wrote it, and why I decided to rewrite it so it actually says something.
One of the first things you’re going to run into is what POV and tense to write your blurb in. Many will say that no matter what POV your book is written in, your blurb (or description) should be written in third person present. That may still be true for traditional publishing, but in the years that first person present POV has taken over the indie scene, especially in romance, more and more authors are writing their blurbs in the POV and tense that matches their book.
When I was writing in third person past, I was writing my blurbs in third person present and there’s a lot more advice and how-to articles on how to write a third-person blurb over a first person blurb. Third person is actually a bit easier since there’s a lot of resources telling you how to do it. There’s some controversy with how much to give away, since a blurb is comprised of characters, motivations, and more importantly, stakes, and if you don’t give your potential reader something, they’ll think your book is about nothing. I’ve always been of the mind that you need spoilers to intrigue your audience because even if you reveal an important plot point, a reader is still going to have to read to see how it came about and how the issue is resolved. It was interesting to see people saying that telling a reader your romance has a happily ever after is a big spoiler, when really, it’s just genre convention. Readers who read romance already know that you’re going to give them a happily ever after (if you don’t, watch out), it’s how the couple navigates the problems you throw at them to keep them reading. So, don’t be afraid to give something away because that’s what will hook your reader into buying your book.
When I was writing blurbs for my third person books, I was following this formula:
Introduce your character: Mitch has given up on love . . . until he meets her.
What happened to change their normal life: Burned in a horrific accident, he never believed he could find a woman who would see past his scars.
What are the tension and obstacles: But she makes him face more than just his fears of a broken heart.
Stakes/hook: Is he brave enough to do what it takes to keep her love?
The whole thing is pretty short:
Mitch has given up on love . . . until he meets her. Burned in a horrific accident, he never believed he could find a woman who would see past his scars. But she makes him face more than just his fears of a broken heart. Is he brave enough to do what it takes to keep her love?
Then I have her POV:
Character: Callie hides her secrets . . . she’s afraid if Mitch discovers them, he won’t want her.
Then I skip a whole bunch of parts and end with: When their relationship turns too hot to handle, she’ll have to decide if it’s time to fight fire with fire, or if it’s time to walk away before she gets burned.
At ninety-one words, I could have added a lot more. Blurbs are typically around 150 to 200 words and you can see my ninety-one words leave a lot of room on the back cover:
I won’t add to mine just because this book is already published, and in writing this blog post and using this book as an example made me see a typo that I had to change on both KDP and IngramSpark–not to mention that I had to pay $25 dollars to fix the cover on Ingram, so I’m just going to leave well enough alone for now. (And also, FML.)
But the basic formula to follow for a third person present blurb is:
Sentence 1–2: Hero/heroine introduction (who they are, what they want).
Sentence 3–4: Disruption to their normal life.
Sentence 5–6: Other character enters (opposing force or love interest).
Sentence 7–8: Tension and obstacles.
Final line: Stakes + tease.
Here’s the blurb for book two of that series, His Frozen Dreams (and yay, there are no typos!):
Jared didn’t want to fall in love . . . Character Introduction Then he picks Leah up from the airport, and he knows he has no choice. Disruption of normal life, or maybe inciting incident When his wife left him to move to New York to work for popular fashion magazine, Jared swore he’d find a woman who loved living in Rocky Point as much as he did. Tension and obstacles Leah is not that woman. He just has to make his heart believe it. Stakes and tease
Leah hates living in New York . . . but she can’t leave the big-city stress for small-town love. Or can she? With responsibilities she can’t ignore, Leah will have to choose between the safe life she’s been living in the city or risking it all for Jared’s love and the wide-open spaces that will heal her heart.
This blurb, too, could probably use some plumping up, such as why Leah hates living in the city, maybe hint at the responsibilities that keep here there. But I have the tension of her having to choose between taking the easy way out and staying or risking it for Jared because he loves her.
It’s simple as far as blurbs go, but working with the formula makes it easy to put something together.
Writing first person present blurbs I found to be much more difficult because not only do you have to have all those pieces of what makes a third person blurb, you also have to infuse the character voice into it as well.
Here’s the formula for a first person blurb. You’ll find it’s not that different from a third person blurb:
Hook / Who I am / What I want – Open in the protagonist’s voice, showing who they are or what they desire.
Disruption / Inciting Incident – What shakes up their normal life or challenges their goal.
Love Interest / Conflict Introduction – Introduce the other character or opposing force through the protagonist’s perspective.
Tension / Stakes – Show personal stakes and obstacles, reflecting their thoughts and feelings.
Tease / Final Hook – End with a line that keeps the reader curious and shows the character’s voice.
Let’s take a look at the blurb I wrote for Captivated by Her the first book I published under my pen name when I switched to first person:
Rick The last thing I need is a reporter at my doorstep, and not just any reporter: the infamous Devyn Scott. Love interest, inciting incident Since the construction accident that killed two of my men and turned me into a wounded beast, I’ve avoided people, but when a blizzard blows in, I can’t force her to leave, no matter how much I want to. Who I am, conflict of interest I have enough blood on my hands. Tension, stakes Trapped for days, she slowly tears down my defenses. Tension, stakes When she starts investigating the accident against my orders, she steps into the line of fire, and she proves what I’ve always known. I’ll never be strong enough to keep her safe. Final hook
Then we have the FMC POV. I’ve seen some blurbs that only do his, since the MMC would be the best selling point, like Mafia, or Motorcycle Club. Then I’ve seen where there is only hers, like maybe Dark Academia or coming of age. Maybe some YA where her story is more important and if there’s a male protagonist he’s only there as a subplot. You would have to do some research and look at what other authors in your genre are doing. You might be writing in a genre that would only have one POV like thriller or psychological/domestic thriller. I like including both, but maybe to hook the reader at first glance, I do his first on the back of the book and the buy-page on Amazon.
Devyn I’ll get fired if billionaire Rickard Mercer won’t give me an interview, but by the time the snow clears, I don’t want it. Who I am I want more. Tension I want to clear Rick’s name, and I start looking into the accident that will force him to live in pain for the rest of his life. Tension, stakes Someone caused that accident, and I’m going to find out who. Stakes Because only then will he know he’s good enough to take what I want to give him. My heart. Stakes, final hook
That blurb has 218 words in it and hits the 150-200 guidelines. It also fits well on the back of a book wrap:
Here’s a printable checklist you can download and keep:
The original blog post touched on how your blurb will look in the back. Over the years I’ve been publishing, I’ve either put the title at the top or used a tagline. I’m pretty proud of Captivated by Her‘s tagline and I use it in ad copy whenever and wherever I promote my book: Trapped with her during a blizzard, I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of not falling in love.
If I ever redid the cover now, I probably wouldn’t center it like I have it here. My style has evolved but not too much. Considering I don’t sell many paperbacks anyway, I don’t get too hyped about about things.
Anyway, so this blog post will be more informative to anyone hoping to learn how to write a blurb. There are lots of resources out there, but the best thing you can do after you’ve written it is get feedback–preferably from someone who hasn’t read your book yet. They can tell you if you’re leaving too much out. I understand not wanting to give anything away, but you have to give your readers something or they won’t want to buy your book. I give away lots and lots and lots in the blurbs for my King’s Crossing serial. Each book builds on top of the other, so I really didn’t have any choice referencing what happened in the previous book. I’m hoping the first book sucks readers in and they buy just to know what happens next regardless of what the blurbs say. If you want to read them, you can on my author website: https://vmrheault.com/kings-crossing-series/
If you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of, you can always ask ChatGPT, otherwise known to me as Al. I get opinions on using him will vary and you have to do what’s best for you. He can’t compare your blurb to what others are doing in your genre–only you can do that. And he can’t write your blurb from scratch or your blurb will sound like him and not you or your characters, but he can come up with some hooky lines if copyrighting isn’t your thing and it’s easy to build from there. All the blurbs I used as examples today were written by me because Al didn’t exist back then.
There are a couple of resources that I’d recommend if you’re having trouble finding feedback. The Indie Cover Project on Facebook has members who will give you feedback and you can find that group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/582724778598761
There’s not much you have to do with your spine. Remember, if you are publishing a novella, after formatting, your manuscript must be 100 pages or more. This is where the 5×8 trim size (the smallest size CreateSpace has to offer) comes in handy. You can also maybe bump up the font size in your manuscript if spine text is that important to you. But don’t go too big, you’re not publishing a Large Print edition.
Let’s look at the cover and template again:
You kind of want the front cover, the spine, and the back cover to blend together. We don’t have a lot of colors to work with here, so I would probably leave the spine white and use the same fonts I used on the cover and keep them black.
Draw a text box in the text box. Don’t make it bigger than you need; smaller text boxes are easier to work with.
Experiment with the font and the size. You can manually enter in the font size and work with the numbers even if the font size is not available in the drop down selection. You can see here that my name is not centered on the spine, but I chose the biggest font size that would fit. Move the text box so your name is centered on the spine:
The text box overlap doesn’t matter, we’ll fix that. The most important thing is that the letters are clear and big and as centered as you can make them. If your hand is shaky, or your mouse is temperamental, use your direction keys on your keyboard to move the box around.
Take off the edges by making sure the text box is selected and selecting No Outline in the Shape Outline option in the Shape Styles menu.
The white box is still visible on the cover so you need to select Shape Fill and select No Fill to make the box clear. This option is above the Shape Outline option we used to make the lines disappear.
You can see my name isn’t centered, it’s a little high, but the text box is gone. Move the text box around so you can center your name the best you can. CreateSpace won’t fix any issues you have. On my first attempt on The Corner of 1700, the bottom of the C was missing because I didn’t adjust the text box when I made the font bigger. Anyway, move the text box.
That looks pretty damn near perfect. There’s no rule that says your name has to go on the top and the title on the bottom. Do what you want, just make sure the text is in the right direction. Take a look at traditionally published books and do you the best you can. Fiddle with the colors if you want, play with font and size.
Do the same with the title.
I use an imprint and like to put it on my spine. Insert a text box.
Use the Shape Fill to insert the picture, then use the No Shape Outline to get rid of the text box lines.
You’ll get a warning from CreateSpace if this image isn’t 300 dpi. Mine printed fine at the 79 dpi because it’s so small, but you might as well make sure it’s 300 dpi in GIMP in case you want to use it anywhere else.
So far, this is what we have. It looks pretty good, and I think the title and author name are centered and as big as I can make them. If your book is thicker, you could even put the couple’s picture at the top; I’ve seen that done before, and I’m sure you have too. But the thinner the book the less room you have. That isn’t an excuse to plump up your book for no reason. CreateSpace charges you for printing costs, which means a higher price for your book the thicker it is.
We’ll look at the back cover next. I think you’ll find the worst part about the back cover is writing the blurb!
Book cover templates are not such a terrible option if you tried to make your own cover and either couldn’t get what was in your head onto a Word doc, or you don’t have the time or energy to figure it all out.
There are template websites out there that sell them and also lots of places to buy already-made covers. You just put your own info into the template and you’re all done–similar to the CS Cover Creator.
While I was looking around some of these sites I noticed a few things:
Some templates only fit certain book sizes, so make sure the cover that you think will perfectly fit your story and title will also accommodate the size of the book you were planning on. This is especially important if you’re paperbacking a novella. The smaller trim size will make more pages, creating a thicker book.
Some sites sell you the cover and that’s it. Make sure that you are buying a template that also includes the spine and back, otherwise, it will be your responsibility to match font and colors to create the spine and back cover. This isn’t so important if you are going digital (e-reader) only, but maybe down the road you decide to create a paperback as well, you’ll need to submit all of it.
Sometimes you can copy it for free. Study the picture, the background, the placement of title, where your name will go. How fancy is the back? If you found the picture at Dreamstime could you copy it and save yourself a couple bucks? It’s worth trying to find the picture at least before you buy the template. You can do this for any book cover as well. Look up the top selling books in your genre. Make a list of the things they have in common and see what you can come up with. If anything, this will give you an idea of what you’re looking for in a template.
Maybe a template is cheaper. I made a pretty one on Canva, and the picture was a dollar. I found the same picture on Canstockphoto, but since I buy them singly there and don’t subscribe, it would have cost me 8 dollars. Canva is front cover only, so either way I would still have to do the spine and back cover myself. And if I use Canva, I would need to figure out the font so I could use the same on the back cover.
All I did was Google “book cover templates” and came up with a few choices.
Cover Design Studio looked nice, and they have some pretty covers. Make sure you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page of a template you like and look for Additional Information. It will tell you the trim size available, etc. In the pricing, they have a couple of options, and one is CS plus Kindle. That sucks because if you upload to CS first, they send you the file for the Kindle cover, it even says so in the file name:
There’s The Corner of 1700’s Kindle picture of the cover CS sent me for when I put my book in KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). So that website is making you pay for something you don’t need. Otherwise, you can buy the Kindle version and make the spine and back cover yourself.
Joanna Penn on her blog post listed DIY Book Covers as a resource. I didn’t check them out but that could be something to look into as well.
Otherwise, Google “Premade Book Covers” and that will give you a bigger selection of finds. But, as always, make sure you ask about the spine and back cover. They may charge you extra for those.
Hopefully, you can use them for inspiration. I found this one on Cover Design Studio:
Something about it called to me. I don’t know if was the sparkles, or what. But I liked it and wanted to replicate it. I couldn’t find the picture, but I found something . . . not similar, but something else I liked, and I made this:
It’s not exactly what Cover Design Studio made, but I like mine. Maybe you can find something that can help you put down what you like too. And I always have to add the disclaimer to make sure you can use it commercially, and in the copyright page of your book, credit the photo to the website and artist who made your picture available. You bought it, but it’s the polite thing to do. I stole this picture off Pinterest so I wouldn’t be able to use it for a real cover. Hopefully, I could find it elsewhere, but this book hasn’t been written, so it’s not terribly important.
I have to admit, I had a moment last night after my last post where I thought maybe I shouldn’t be blogging about this. Because let’s be honest, my first few attempts at doing a book cover didn’t go so well, and they didn’t prove I should be the one to tell you what to do. But I did try again this afternoon, and with a little patience, I am proud of what I came up with:
I’m actually going to keep this one around because I do think I’ll end up using it. I love how all the colors blend together. The woman looks like my female MC, the guy is cute (some of those guys in the stock photos are NOT all that cute, LOL), and it looks more like a traditionally published book cover would look. I wish maybe the path would have had some people running on it–that would have tied in the title to the story a little better, but that’s okay. I tried to look for one, had even thought through all my searches that I had found one but didn’t bookmark it. I’ll look for it some more.
Anyway, how I did it was I started with a “base” of a texture that I found off Pixabay. I searched blue dots, and found something I liked:
But I realized the colors were too bright, so in the picture tools, I made them grey and white which meshed with the people better. I still needed text boxes to put the couple, the trees, and then the title and my name. I fiddled around with the placement of all three until I was satisfied. I don’t know if a person can be 100% satisfied. It’s rather like reading your work over and over again and noting all the things that you would change.
I don’t mind posting my struggles on here because I want you to know that 1) I don’t know what I’m doing, but I still don’t have to pay someone to help me, which, maybe it shouldn’t be, but is a huge pride thing for me, and 2) NEVER publish your first attempt. I went from this:
To this:
And the difference is incredible. I didn’t ask for any extra help, I didn’t look on any blogs for extra tips (though I strongly encourage you to do whatever you need to do to create a pleasing cover). It was just me, some stubbornness, and some impatience, or patience, however you want to look at it.
I know I said this story takes place in the fall, and it does. It goes from October until February, so using a winter theme for the cover is okay. I could easily go with an autumn theme too, but the cover you end up with can vary greatly with the photos you find and can pay for.
I’ve been doing a little digging around with templates, so now that I’m satisfied, I’ll write about those next. I promise.
The little box is to make sure you know where your ISBN box belongs. You can take off the outlines for both, and take off the Fill for the little box.
Draw a text box in the text box. Don’t make it bigger than you need; smaller text boxes are easier to work with.
Move the text box so your name is centered on the spine:
would have cost me 8 dollars. Canva is front cover only, so either way I would still have to do the spine and back cover myself. And if I use Canva, I would need to figure out the font so I could use the same on the back cover.
Vania Margene Rheault 