If you look through the romance genres on Amazon, you’ve probably noticed tons of covers with models positioned so their heads are cropped off by the edge of the book, or turned away from the viewer. What’s up with that? Some cover designers do it to allow the reader to imagine themselves when the model Continue Reading

Just for fun, I coded a random story generator that produces shifter romance story seeds. Visit it at http://www.scarlettebooks.com/shifter-romance/ Examples of stories it’s produced: The plot of this romance starts when Natalie, a shy woman, meets Isaiah, fixer and alpha badger shifter. Significant scenes occur onstage and in the woods. Featured tropes include Hero and Heroine Continue Reading

Here’s an article on avoiding bad stock photos. It’s aimed at web designers, but is useful for anyone who uses stock photos. The same site also has advice on how to ask for design feedback so you get useful responses, not simply “Yeah, that’s nice,” as well as good advice on fonts that works for Continue Reading

In last week’s post, I talked about being commissioned to create a cover template for Zoe Chant’s paranormal shifter romances, her requirements, and researching her genre. As a prolific writer, she would be using several designers to create her covers, and needed a template that she could give to each designer to make sure that Continue Reading

If you’re publishing a series, you want readers to identify books at a glance as belonging to that series. This is a bit easier to do if you’ve got one designer doing all the covers, but what if you’ve got more than one? Zoe Chant is a prolific writer, putting out about one story a Continue Reading

Today the Longreads Blog features seven articles about book covers. Some of the pieces focus on design: “Judge This: The Power of First Impressions,” by Chip Kidd: “How to Judge the Cover of a Book,” by Kylie Boelte Another looks at cover differences between books marketed to men and those aimed at women : “The Second Shelf: Continue Reading