The creator of this website doesn't post often, but when he does, he makes up for the lack of quantity with sheer quality. He has an eye for interesting new type design plus a deep knowledge of design history. His enthusiasm is infectious. Well worth visiting for ideas and inspiration, unexpected combinations of type and strange tales from the dawn of typography.
Mud, Blood and Gold — Cover Design
In his book "Mud, Blood and Gold", Les Pitt tackles the wild years after the discovery of gold in the Daylesford area. He has amassed a wealth of anecdotes and character studies, combined with a range of photographs from the era. We wanted a title that seemed a little worn, but still bold and striking. The title is Nexa Rust and the subtitle is Nexa Rust script. The author name is set in Sentinel.
Amazon Set to Open Non-Virtual Bookstores
After spending the last decade laying waste to the bookstores of the world, it now seems vaguely possible that Amazon is about to build a few of its own. That's right: physical bookstores, with actual books on actual shelves. And actual customers, one assumes. Amazon doesn't do anything without a plan, and without a preternatural understanding of their customers, so their business model must be pretty robust. As this blog post points out, the massive number of print on demand titles that Amazon hosts gives it the ability to tailor store offerings in a granular way without having to maintain huge warehouses of stock. And no-one does logistics and fulfillment as well as Amazon. Lovers of books may find it reassuring that Amazon evidently subscribes to the view that print books will be around for the foreseeable future.
Makerbook Showcases Quality Free Resources
Free is the new black on the Web. Free digital resources of surprising quality are available for photographs, typefaces, illustrations, web wireframes and much more. Makerbook brings together some of the higher end sources of free material and organises them in a simple and visually attractive way.
Primer Promotional Lessons from Google
As the biggest seller of advertising space in the world, Google knows a thing or two about marketing. They have distilled some of that knowledge into a series of lessons. Topics include "Create a Landing Page that Lands Customers", "Segment Your Customers to Reach the Right Ones" and "Keep Customers Interested with Email Automation".
“We assembled a small team of our own marketers and challenged them to build a product they would use. The result is Primer.”
Children's Book Council Reviews
Best known as the organisers of the CBCA awards, the Children's Book Council of Australia also offers (but does not guarantee) to review childrens and YA books sent to them at this address:
Reading Time Online
PO Box 216
Kallangur LPO QLD 4503
The reviews are published at readingtime.com.au
The overwhelming majority of reviews are of books published by mainstream publishers, but independent authors should still give it a go. The criteria for inclusion genuinely seems to be quality rather than origin.
Using Facebook to Sell Books (really)
Despite the presence of 'book' in the name of social media's behemoth, Facebook is usually not associated with book selling or promotion. But with 1.6 billion regular users (about which it knows a great deal), Facebook offers a massive opportunity to engage in savvy marketing. Digital Book World recently published an article by Mark Dawson, who describes himself as "pretty much the definition of a midlist author". He cites specific strategies, gives his own sales figures and engages with commenters. Well worth a read.
Content Marketing: an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep
A very interesting discussion on the topic of content marketing. Mark O'Brien, CEO of Newfangled (a US-based agency partnering with agencies "to make digital business development platforms for themselves and their clients") makes a good case for highly targeted content-based marketing. He discusses the approach with one of his clients, who gives many examples of the effectiveness of this approach. The client has gone from trying to attract clients from many industries to focusing on one very small industry segment. Using social media tools and creating useful, responsive content, the client was able to reposition his business, resulting in a massive increase in client engagement, meaningful lead generation from his website, all through quality content. No hard-sell, no desperate cold-calling.
“[these new businesses are] looking at a much smaller, smaller, smaller sector of the economy, but they’re marketing to thousands of those people. Funny, it’s like the magnifying glass. You’re putting that on there but you’re actually reaching far more people ultimately in a far more effective way, even though you’re looking at a much smaller slice of the economy.”
Re-starting an Important Social Debate
Deb Campbell is a passionate advocate for voluntary euthanasia. She believes that risk averse politicians have quietly kept the issue out of the public debate, despite broad public support for greater patient control over the end of one's life. We used a bold, highly visible sans typeface with a touch of personality for the title and author name (Sinkin Sans) and used Impact Label Reversed for the subtitle. The delicately shaded background artwork was supplied by the author.
Keep Calm and Sell Your Book
Author and client Jaclyn Humfrey writes to inform us that she has found two new outlets for her excellent colouring book (both located in beautiful Albany, Western Australia) — Paperbark, and Yellow Bird.
A Tale of Two Professions
Joe Reich's latest book is an enjoyable journey through the vanished world of 1970s Melbourne — focusing on the intersecting lives of a doctor at a major urban hospital and an engineer working on the doomed first attempt to build the Westgate bridge. It is a masculine world of prejudice, misconceptions and cigarette smoke. This draft of the cover features an inverted image of the bridge in its incomplete stage and a troubled Melbourne sky.
Museum of the World
Only the British Museum could bill itself as the Museum of the World without straying too far into hyperbole. With the fruit of centuries of acquisition (imperial or otherwise) at its disposal, the BM has allied with Google to showcase some its most impressive items online. Users can scroll along an interactive timeline and drill down to objects of interest. Along similar lines to their very successful "A History of the World in 100 Objects" collaboration with the BBC.
Bayside Grunge — Book Cover Design
A tale of growing up on the shores of Port Phillip in the 1980s, featuring a lad with attitude, problems with the authorities, and a taste for booze. Out soon from Brolga Publishing.
Lightning Source versus Createspace
One of the benefits of digital printing combined with online bookselling is the capacity of printing books as they are ordered, rather than pre-printing and warehousing. This massively reduces costs for small presses and self-publishers. Two major players dominate this field — Createspace, owned by Amazon, and Ingrams Spark (Lightning Source in Australia). The two services offer a very similar level of functionality, but there are differences in pricing, approach, assistance and sales channel availability. Check out these interesting articles discussing the relative merits of each service, and identify which one better fits your particular use-case.
Ending the Year on an Optimistic Note
While parts of the world have endured a litany of horrors, 2015 was (perhaps surprisingly) the best year in history for the average human. Multiple indicators (income, health equality, life expectancy) continue to trend upwards. Many challenges remain, but the world in general is far from the dystopia suggested by disaster-biased news services.
Font Use Across the Internet
Despite the advent of web-served type, Arial is still Queen of the Internet. 616,000 of the Web's top million websites use this rather unexceptional typeface. Fontreach gives an useful snapshot of font use.There are several old standards originally commissioned by Microsoft, a few freebies served by Google and finally, further down the list, some interesting new typeface designs.
On the Road Promoting Her Book — an Author's experience
Deborah Benson recently wrote "Judicial Murder — the Crown VS David Young", published under the Eaglehawk Press imprint. Here is her account of a recent promotional trip to the Goulburn Valley.
My book has been welcomed in the Goulburn Valley book shops and newsagencies. Helen Sofra from Collins Bookstore in Shepparton suggested we arrange to visit to speak about DY’s story.
Jan Hutton the Project Manager of the Goulburn Valley Libraries went into action and had 3 venues organised, complete with media releases for each town. But before we began, we had an interview with the Shepparton News for the weekend edition. I say ‘we’ as my husband Chris shared the experience with me and during the course of the talk he read the hanging scene in his articulate expressive manner, resulting in numerous watery eyes in the room.
Numurkah library was our first appearance and the turnout of keen listeners was wonderful. Historical crime seems to be of interest and captures our imagination especially in the country areas where there is still a feeling of remoteness and a connection with the environment.
Our next engagement was in Nagambie again with an interested crowd of people and lastly at Shepparton. All venues supplied a good home made spread of delectable cakes and slices.
The fact that people were excited to actually meet an author said something about the way writers are removed from the general public who are their potential readers. Writers nowadays have to wear several hats to become known. A very enjoyable warming experience while sharing a story that has been waiting 150 years to be told.
The Fifth Identity — Book Cover
Investigators trace the many identities of a man with a traumatic and complex past. Our client wanted us to work in the evacuation of troops at Dunkirk in WWII, identity papers and the man himself. We integrated the colour palette to give the overall cover a sense of unity. Typefaces used include Rex Bold, Rex Inline, impact label and Mom's Typewriter.
Can I Use the Same Book Title? A Commonsense Answer.
With millions of books in print, finding a completely original book title can be tricky. We are often asked about the legal / copyright situation regarding very similar or identical book titles. This post has a fairly commonsense take on the issue. For the Australian situation, the Arts Law Centre may be able to assist.
Farmer in the House — the amazing vanishing client
Some design projects were not meant to be. The rough concepts below for a farm-to-home fresh food delivery startup never went beyond the initial stage. The startup quickly ran out of funds, staff went unpaid, and the founder departed the sunburnt country just ahead of his very unhappy creditors. However, not every venture capitalist is kin to Arthur Daley — a second startup (qodeo.com) has been the exact opposite — a reliable client for many years.
