Kevin J Moriarity

 

 Formatting What about what I do—formatting? For most books, you should not spend a lot of time or money on the book’s interior format. As I’ve told my clients: no one ever bought a novel because it had an expensive, fancy font! There are exceptions to this rule, of course. I had an author approach me about a picture book. He was also a photographer, and his vision was a high-end “coffee table” book. I had to tell him I wasn’t the right guy for his project. I use Microsoft Word to format books and that is not the right tool for what he wanted to accomplish. In fact, I also told him I didn’t think KDP was a good choice. He wanted heavy, glossy photo-grade paper and KDP doesn’t offer that option. He needed a book designer that used Adobe InDesign, which has better, more precise positioning capability and access to approximately 30,000 Adobe fonts. It is the right tool for his project.  For a novel or non-fiction book, even with some images, Microsoft Word is a good choice to cre...

 

  Description  The book description, or blurb, is what used to be on the back cover. It was the publisher’s last chance to hook a reader, after the title and cover. Used to be? Most books are bought online. The percentage of self-published books bought online is even higher. The only people who will read your back cover already bought the book! I believe you could leave the back cover blank and that would not affect your sales. Focus you attention on the online book description. The online description and the back cover copy do not have to match. You have much more space for the online description than the back of your book. Utilize it!  Your book description is advertising. It should not be a synopsis of the story. Like the title, it should be written to attract, intrigue and sell. Most of my clients are uncomfortable with this concept. Get help. Find a copywriter. Pick their brains. Read some books on advertising. Write many drafts. Take all the time you need to get it ...

 

Cover I don’t design covers. I did a few for non-fiction clients, but usually I receive artwork from a graphic artist, almost always just the front cover. I apply the words to the cover: title, author and back cover copy. If the graphic artist specializes in book covers and knows the KDP specifications as well as I do, I get a full cover that is ready to be uploaded. There is a lot of material online about book covers. Much of this advice is genre specific. Certain genres tend to utilize specific colors, fonts and image characteristics. If you’ve written a genre piece, go to Barnes and Noble or search online for books like yours to see what others are doing.  Covers are more important than ever. Back in the day when I went to Borders to buy a book (I still miss Borders!) I would cruise the aisles and see mostly spines. If a title caught my eye (don’t discard the importance of an intriguing title) I’d pull the book out and look at the cover. At this point, most of the books went rig...

 In 2012 I led a writers group at one of our local libraries. I suggested we self-publish an anthology on Amazon. I didn’t do it because I thought we would sell a lot of copies. I didn’t even care if one of my works was in it, though it was cool to see a book appear when I searched for my name in Amazon. I did it for two reasons. First, I am more motivated to write with a tangible goal and a deadline. Second, I wanted to understand the mechanics behind creating a Kindle book on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and a paperback on what was then called CreateSpace (now absorbed by KDP). We did not sell many copies. The book turned out to be embarrassing. More on that later. I eventually decided to format books as a hobby business. I do it for friends and friends of friends. As I write this, I’m working on another writers group anthology. This is my 76th book. I’ve gotten good at formatting. I’ve studied hundreds of books by the largest publishers, and I know what a professionally publis...