Tuesday 14 September 2010

Lumps & Scabs

Self-publishing is difficult--getting the books onto bookshop shelves is near impossible. And getting a customer to pick up a self-published book is difficult too. You need a really catchy title, and some really striking cover art, especially if you're trying to compete in an already crowded genre like SF/fantasy.



Speaking of crappy graphics, for some reason Blogger has dropped the resolution of the header graphic of this blog, making it look fuzzy and degraded. I don't know why this should have happened, but I'll try to replace it soon and see if it sticks. Not that anyone cares but me, I'm sure, but I feel bad picking on other people's graphic design skills under such a shoddy-looking title.  (UPDATE: Now it's fixed.)

4 comments:

Bully said...

Hi JRSM! Your header is now a 400 x 67 pixel file (rather than larger as it probably should be). You can probably re-upload the original, larger res file to correct it.

JRSM said...

Thank you--I'll try that. I didn't know you read this, Bully--I've enjoyed your work since I discovered it via Mike Sterling's enthusiastic recommendations.

Craig D. said...

If I were going through the trouble of writing a book and getting it published, I'd also go through the trouble of hiring a decent artist to get me some decent cover art. Or at least purchasing a good stock photo. These covers just scream, "I DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT." Which makes you wonder if the author also didn't give one about the quality of the book itself, which just adds to the whole "this wasn't good enough to be published by a real publisher" self-publication stigma.

JRSM said...

That's the thing: there's nothing, other than a sense of misplaced ironic appreciation, that would make you want to pick these up.