This is Colossal is a rolling survey of new art and design. Curating the site must be a huge labour. The works featured are consistently striking and often involve great feats of imagination and manual skill. Well worth a look, particularly for creatives needing inspiration.
Preparing Your Manuscrript for ebook Conversion
A note regarding the preparation of your book manuscript for ebook conversion, from our preferred ebook converter, Warren Broom:
What can be done in the ePub format:
Firstly, to convert to the epub format, we require a print ready PDF. This must be single page single column. If not, all of the sentences that form each column end up shuffled like a deck of cards. We will also need an ISBN and a description and subject to place into the meta-data that shows up on the retail site. Descriptions should be kept to 2 to 3 paragraphs.
Images:
We prefer to take the images from the pdf as many have captions that we include in the image so that they do not get separated from the image. We do all images in colour for those reading devices that support colour but, of course, they will render in greyscale in those that don’t.
Tables:
We can only do tables that are two cells wide as any more and the words start to get squashed up at higher zoom levels. Tables with more than 2 columns are done as images. Sometimes when table cross “pages, some of the text can separate but this is not usually a problem.
Hyphens:
If the text is justified, some words break in two, utilising a hyphen. Once again, this is not really a problem but, if the author wants to avoid them, we can align the text to the left.
Table of contents:
eBook reading devices produce a digital TOC but we usually add hyperlinks to the TOC in the ePub for earlier reading devices that don’t. We can also link sub heading to the TOC but they are not really necessary.
Indexes:
Redundant in ePubs as all reading devises have a search function. However, if the author really wants to include an index, it should only include single word references as multiple words will link to all references in each of each word included within the entry.
Footnotes:
We place all of the footnotes at the end of the chapter and can link the reference within the text to its’ corresponding footnote. I can also add a return link back to the text the reference is in. It should be noted that footnotes are very time-consuming and can dramatically increase the price of the ePub.
Fonts:
Fonts can be embedded but, many reading devices have a default font that overrides the embedded fonts. A maximum of 2 fonts can be embedded. It is also possible to add audio and video to an ePub but, this is very complex and dramatically increases the file size and also, the cost. Our recommendation is that that a hyperlink to an external website be employed to view or listen to these forms of content.
Hope and Change — Cover Design
Our client's book dealt with her long and ultimately successful struggle with an eating disorder, and she wanted the cover design to reflect a sense of optimism and potential change. We used a contemplative photograph and a fairly quiet type arrangement, with colours pulled from the underlying image. The author commented that "the great cover that you designed for my memoir ebook version receives lots of praise. The image you have created portrays the essence of looking ahead, remaining hopeful, and visualising new horizons. Also, I greatly appreciate your creativity in incorporating a picture of my favourite walking place, on the Bellarine Peninsula, into the cover design. Best wishes, June."
See also the author's website here.
Uncovered Secrets — Cover Design
Our client wanted to hint at the intimate nature of the secrets shared by a group of women without the cover design being too overt or crass. Title set in the beautiful Lust Script, available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Low Cost Standing Desks
Spooked by recent reports about the dangers of sitting all day, but not enthused about standing for such long periods of time? The Varidesk might offer a good compromise — the device sits on your existing desk and can be used to easily raise your monitor and keyboard to allow standing, then back down when your legs start to rebel. The Varidesk is relatively cheap and has an agent in Australia, which hopefully would keep shipping costs down.
Sunny Side Up — a new cover
A novel charting a friendship between a Greek migrant and a young, independently minded woman. We wanted to create a cover that depicted a spontaneous, unguarded moment, and perhaps hinted at deeper currents between the protagonists.
Fair Pay for Illustrators
Imagining a world where illustrators are paid fairly for their work, this page sets out suggested rates for various tasks and situations. In an increasingly borderless design world competing with much lower wage regions, those kind of rates may be difficult for many illustrators to achieve. The site hosting this page is a time portal back to the earliest days of eye-wateringly bad web design
Fate's Plaything
The middle aged protagonist loses his wife to a younger man, then falls in love with a woman who may or may not have his best interests at heart. Restrained typography and hints of Italy, venue for the novel's denouement.
The Mechanics of Ebook Selling
A succinct explanation of ebook selling at Jane Curry Publishing (now relaunched as Ventura), including the setting of prices and distribution of royalties.
Guide to Proper Use of Typographic Characters
A beautifully designed page designed to assist with the correct use of apostrophes, dashes, accents and other mistreated characters. Downloadable PDF version here.
Swordplay and Swashbuckling
Stanley Goldyn takes an entertaining dive into the little-known world of the Thirty Years War, following his characters across the now-vanished Kingdoms of Central Europe. We blended battle scenes and a famous Cavalier and hopefully achieved a high impact result that hints at the key themes and tone of the book.
Two Kinds of People in Pictures
A cute, visually-oriented site exploring the subtle differences between people as expressed by their habits and technological preferences.
A Profile in Courage
John Jess was that rare Australian politician brave enough to stand up to his own party. He demanded justice for the seamen injured or killed in the collision of two RAN vessels — HMAS Voyager and HMAS Melbourne. We were lucky enough to be supplied with a sensitive pencil sketch of Jess, which we combined with two images of the tragic incident.
Victorian Gold
A very well written work of local history, detailing the roaring growth of a gold mining town in Central Victoria. The map featured shows the town grid and the decorative elements are in keeping with the era under examination. Title set in Eveleth.
Country Music from the Heart
Musician Tony McKenna wanted a mockup of his website that he could take to a developer for implementation. We designed a logo and related header bar, and worked with a three column grid and colour scheme drawn from the landscapes loved by our client.
Morning Routines for the Upwardly Mobile
The Interweb is saturated with advice on attaining success, be it financial, professional or spiritual (or all three). Lucrative careers are built around nudging and pep-talking people towards lucrative careers. The habits and utterances of Zuck or Steve Jobs or Richard Branson (Sir) are examined minutely and lessons drawn, as if it is possible to bottle their lightning (and luck). My Morning Routine is a modest variation on this theme, focused on the morning habits of often scarily disciplined people. Breakfast or no breakfast, meditation, juice, email answering and exercise — you decide which mix works on your upward path.
Legal Deposit Wants You
Self-published authors may be unaware that they are obligated to supply one copy of their book to the National Library of Australia. One imagines a vast warehouse somewhere in Canberra containing the literary effusions of an entire nation. Besides an author's Federal obligations, each state usually has its own Legal Deposit scheme. Public-spirited authors will therefore need to save for two lots of postage stamps.
Consider a Publicist
Self-published authors typically operate on a very tight budget. Short run digital printing, print on demand and ebooks have made the economics of self-publishing more viable, but rarely do authors have much left over for the promotion of their work. Some authors have a natural talent for self-promotion and the confidence and energy to implement an effective campaign. Many, however, do not, and either avoid confronting the issue or cultivate the vague idea that their book will somehow be 'discovered' and 'go viral'.
In truth, the vast majority of books instantly sink almost without trace. They are very visible to the author, and to the author's friends and family, but beyond that, a great void. The book is invisible to everyone else. In a crowded marketplace of ideas and creative 'product' a book needs a champion, someone to present it to potential audiences, to tell a story about it and make it into a viable commercial entity. If you as an author have a lot of faith in your latest work and believe it will have a sizeable potential audience, perhaps consider the services of a publicist.
In recent times we have had several authors mention the quality of publicity work carried out by Scott Eathorne of Quikmark Media. If we hear positive things about other writer and small-publisher oriented publicists, we will post it on this blog. Those interested in a purely ebook promotional tactics, please see our post here for some useful tips.
Sand and Sensibility
The author refers to his work as 'romance with the sex left in' and we were tasked with transmitting that proposition to readers. Submission is set in a fictional country on the Arabian peninsula and intelligently explores the collision of western and traditional culture and the desires of men and women forced into proximity by circumstance. Published by Jane Curry Publishing.
The Max Factor
Max Harris was a literary rebel in a time of often stifling conformity. Sometimes ridiculed for his passionate love of the avant garde (and victim of the famous Ern Malley hoax), he was a significant influence in moving Australia towards a more sophisticated literary culture. Our cover shows Max as a young man, the design spare and simple, title typeface Avant Garde (what else?). Biography published by Australian Scholarly Press, due for release in the near future.
