Episode Show Notes

This week’s questions is:

Should you judge a book by its cover?

You can preorder The Anatomy of Prose digitally on all bookstores now.

Click the link here.

LAST CHANCE to read a review copy or be part of the street team for the launch of The Anatomy of Prose. I have a short form which can be found here: https://bit.ly/AoPTeam

Book recommendation this week is Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

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How to Get an Amazing Book Cover with Andrew and Bec Brown

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Twitter: www.twitter.com/design4writers

The post 024 How to Get an Amazing Book Cover with Andrew and Bec Brown appeared first on Sacha Black.

I am not a marketeer by profession, so don’t expect technical wordery, theoretical mumbojumbo or any other professorial nonsense. This post is just the culmination of my obsessive fascination of all things marketing and brand creation.

Do you know who you are as an author or what your brand is? Or even how the fuckins you’re meant to figure it out? No? Let me help…

This week, I am a hand-flapping squawking school girl because the seriously awesome Allie Potts, founder of Axil Hammer Publishing and Productions, made me something I’ve been hankering after forever. A super spangly glitter covered unicorn Sacha Black logo. Three of them actually:

I’ve wanted something to identify my brand visually in the blink of an eye for the longest time, and finally, I have it. The cog means a lot to me for a variety of reasons, most of which you will have to wait for in a later post. But for now, what do you think? 

Allie is open for business and requests. If you need a book cover, a logo or marketing materials designed, drop her a line here. In her own words:

A brand is a mechanism to set you apart from everyone else in your field. It’s a symbol (physical, visual, emotional or otherwise), a concept, a trigger, something that jogs customers minds all the way to your doorstep.

THING 1 – IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CONCEPT, DARLING

Steven Pressfield, author of the War on Art and Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit Anyway, explains that your novels need a concept when advertising them. He says:

“A concept frames (or, more frequently, re-frames) the issue entirely. One of the seminal concepts in advertising history is Avis Rent a Car’s “We’re #2 so we try harder.“” Steven Pressfield, Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit Anyway, P.18

He goes on to explain the reason it’s that’s a concept is because it turns a negative (being second best) into a positive – they will try harder to make your experience better than our competitors (which at the time was Hertz).

Fucking genius. When I read that I had one of those eyeball popping orgasmaphy moments (a hybrid of a big O mixed with an epiphany).

THING 2 – WHO THE FUDGEFUCKLES ARE YOU ANYWAY?

At this point, knowing who you are as an author really helps. If, like me, you recently found yourself wondering around wearing a gormless expression only to smack into a glass-clear door in your local library, then watch mortified, as your glasses ping off your face and you rupture the blissful silence by giving three old biddies coronaries because you bellowed “fuck” at the top of your voice, then trust me, it’s time to sort your shit out.

Dig deep. Figure out what in your life is a hell yeah v.s. a fuck no. It’s those details that help you define who you are as a writer, and as soon as you know that, you can use it to brand yourself.

If you don’t know who you are, let me tell you who I am and it might help you figure out what’s hiding in your secret author brand draws.

I’m an (almost) thirty-year-old teenager, with a potty mouth and a twisted sense of humour. I’m the teenager your parents were terrified you’d make friends with. I eat rules for breakfast because fuck rebellions they’re child’s play, I want a revolution. My darkest secret is that my big black heart has a mushy centre full of ALL THE WORDS AND STORIES, romance, love and shit ton of meliorism. And if you tell anyone I will kill you… slowly…silently…and with a blunt knife… while you’re watching Big Brother.

That’s why my tagline is: Book Business and Bad Words.

I will NEVER stop swearing because I love it. I like the way it tastes dirty and how the words knock against my teeth. But more than anything, I adore the look of pure horror on people’s faces as I drop some obscure swear word in an inappropriate situation. *snigger* (see told you I was a naughty teenager)

Seriously though, that paragraph might read like nonsense, but it’s not.

• The naughty child writes non-fiction and blog posts using bad language and strange made up bullshit.
• The soppy meliorist teenager writes YA fiction.

Annoyingly for me, I am one person, but I have two identities that will lead to two brands and two audiences (I hope).

It comes back to why. Why are you writing? Why does your story matter? If you don’t know, don’t expect me or more importantly your audience to know either.

Who are you? And what is your brand? Let me know in the comments. 

THING 3 – VOGUE IT LIKE YOU’RE ON A RUNWAY

I have zero fashion sense. Seriously less than fuck nothing. The other day I was forced to go shopping because I had four tops left and three of those had bloody holes in. I’m worse than tragic, I’m pathetic. But at least I have a consistent style – the clothes I do have are ALL the same colour… the same colour as my heart… Black.

Why am I talking about my threadbare wardrobe when I should be talking about authorly brandage?

Because style matters.

I might not have style when it comes to donning frocks. But I sure as shit know what I do and don’t like on my blog and across my platform. It matters for you too.

• What imagery do you use?
• Do you use the same voice across your platform?
• Do you use certain colours in your media and designs?
• Do you use certain fonts?
• Have you got a logo, or image or something that sets you apart from everyone else?
• Do you always write about life the universe and the number 42 or do you give people information on the latest scientific breakthroughs in hair re-growing maggot juice?

Be deliberate. You know like when you deliberately trip the bimbo-bitch up at work and pretend it was an accident? That kind of deliberate. Everything you put out says something about your brand. The internet is a fucking virus with a memory like an elephant. Remember that Christmas do when you were catatonically drunk and thought it was a good idea to flash your vaj at the copier boy to see if he passed out and then someone took a photo at a particularly crucial moment? Once you put it out there that shit ain’t ever coming back.

PUT YOUR ‘BRAND’ EVERYWHERE. That’s when it becomes branding. It’s what identifies you as you instead of Chad the chunky butt cheese chunderer.

It’s why you know there’s only one boy with a lightning scar and only one drinks brand that comes in a red can with white swirly writing.

Style matters. Choose yours carefully.

THING 4 – CONSISTENT LIKE YOUR 8AM COFFEE

I’ve already said I’m calculated and deliberate. But I do it for a reason. It makes me consistent. Being consistent builds brand awareness. You’re reliable, people know what to expect. People are sheep. They like consistency and they like knowing what to expect. That’s why everyone reads the same genre, over and over and over and over……. times eleventy cuntzillion.

You need to be deliberate and you need to be consistent when you deliberatize yourself.

(that’s totes a word).

It’s subtle. I doubt anyone would even notice without me highlighting it. But some of the things I do deliberately and consistently are…

• I use the same three fonts in all my imagery
• I use a lot of purple and black in my website design (not on my blog header photos)
• My blog header photos have a ‘look and feel’ to them, even though each post has a completely different image and colour scheme
• I swear constantly
• I always post on a Monday and always a lesson I’ve learnt recently about writing
• I deconstruct everything I come across into a forensic level of detail so I can use it as examples to learn from
• I share my learning because I believe we’re all in this together
• I HATE detail and am beyond shit at grammar so I always have typos no matter how many times I proof read.

If you come here often, those things should ring true to you. What do you do deliberately and consistently? Let me know in the comments.

If you don’t believe me, Charli Mills is a marketeer by profession, she wrote a fantastic series on decoding your author platform 18 months ago, I read it way back then and although it was some time ago, I haven’t forgotten the impact the series had on me. If you haven’t read them, you really, REALLY should. Find her posts here: Decoding the platform, Branding, Why, Voice, Community.

If you like this post, why not sign up for monthly updates and all the latest in publishing news, writing competitions and much more. Sign up here.

The post 4 Things You Need To Know To Master Your Author Brand appeared first on Sacha Black.

You can check out the other posts here:

3 Things You Need to Create The Perfect Gothic Story

11 Must Do’s When Creating A Podcast

4 Top Tips For Self-Publishing Your First Novel

But today, I welcome the lovely Helen Jones, to talk about book covers. I recently talked about mastering your genre’s book cover. But Helen goes into a tone of useful things you need to consider, that I hadn’t even thought of. So her post was super useful for me this week, because I just sent off my cover design brief! *squeal*. Without further ado…. Helen…

The old adage says ‘Never judge a book by its cover.’

However, that’s exactly what many of today’s book purchasers do. With such a wealth of books available to choose from, having a strong, professional looking book cover is one way to stand out from the crowd. Of course, an exciting blurb and a well-written story are also very important, but you only get one chance to make a first impression. Whether you create the cover yourself or work with a designer, there are several things to consider when designing a cover for your book:

ONE – Make the finished design as professional as possible

Just as your story should be properly edited and formatted, so too should your cover look as though it has been designed professionally, especially if you want to compete against the other 99,000+ books in your category.

TWO – How the design works at different sizes

You may have commissioned a beautiful painting or detailed photograph that looks amazing at full size, but which loses many of the details when it’s at thumbnail size (the online display size for your book). Using strong text elements can make it stand out more when it’s at a reduced size.

THREE – The style of your cover

The type of font you use and the image you choose should suit the story inside. For example, flowery curling fonts are well suited to novels in the romance genre, while solid block type tends to suit thrillers or crime novels. Look at other books in your genre for inspiration (but not outright copying!)

FOUR – Repeating Elements

If you’re writing a series, creating a design element to be used on all book covers throughout will tie the whole thing together and give readers a strong visual to guide them through the series.

FIVE – Different devices

Consider how the cover looks in black and white, as this is how it will display on many e-reader devices. Even though at that point you’ve probably already made a sale, a well-designed cover will catch the eye, especially if the reader has a lot of books to choose from.

Many writers who choose to self publish use stock images for their cover artwork. There are several reasons for doing so: the images are sharp and professional, they are easily found online, and it’s not always possible to take the photo you need yourself. Several years ago, I used to work in advertising, and one of the roles I held involved purchasing all stock photography for a large agency. I had to negotiate rights and usages for each image, so it would be fair to say I know a little bit about the process. Stock photos tend to fall into one of three categories:

Rights managed

These are images which require rights to be purchased for their usage. These fees are based on number of uses, the area where the image will be used, the length of time it will be used for and a few other variables, including fees paid to models who may appear in the image. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend using this type of image for your cover, as it’s quite difficult to predict how many copies you will sell or where, and to purchase a blanket usage license would be quite costly!

Royalty Free

These are images for which you pay a single fee, then you’re free to use them as often as you like, wherever you like. Therefore, they are quite useful for cover designs. However, you don’t own the exclusive rights to the image, so it can be used by someone else at any time.

Free

There are lots of sites offering free stock images, some of which are excellent. However, some downsides can include the images not being of the best quality, or that you have to enrol and pay a subscription fee to access the images without watermarks. Also, I have seen free sites with the disclaimer that images are not to be used for commercial purposes, which then discounts them being used on the cover of your book. I recommend to always check the fine print before using any of these images.

Own Photos

You could also try taking your own photographs. I’ve shot some really nice images with my IPhone and it’s fun to play around with them and see what can be created. Apps such as Prisma let you try different effects, and even Microsoft Word has a number of tools to add filters, change colours, adjust exposure, or crop the image into something much smaller.

When it came to designing the covers for my Ambeth books, I wanted them to have a vintage feel, like the embossed leather books you find in antique shops. I also wanted an element that could be used across all the books, tying them together as a set. I worked with Rich Jones at Turning Rebellion (who also happens to be my brother) – the sword and cup images are my own illustrations, then my clever (brother) designer came up with the band element and the wonderful shaded backgrounds. Suffice it to say I’m very pleased with the end result.

Of course cover designs are as subjective as stories themselves – some people will love what you’ve done, while others won’t like it at all. But if you present the most professional, well-designed cover you can, I think that’s half the battle.

Oak and Mist, No Quarter and Hills And Valleys are all available on Amazon.

Helen Jones was born in the UK, then lived in Canada and Australia before returning to England several years ago. The thought of finding magic in ordinary places is one that inspires her; when she was a child she did find a strange valley and hear a scream – the incident stayed with her and was the starting point of the Ambeth Chronicles. She has worked as a freelance writer for the past ten years, runs her own blog at http://www.journeytoambeth.com and has contributed guest posts to others, including the Bloomsbury Writers & Artists site. When she’s not writing, she likes to walk, paint and study karate. She’s now working on several other novels unrelated to Ambeth, enjoying the chance to explore other fantasy worlds.

Why not get even more awesome writing tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains. Click this link and just tap the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page. You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Read Keepers, the first book in my Young Adult fantasy series now. Or to hear more about the release of the sequels as well as get regular CogMail updates you can do so here.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

The post 5 Things to Remember When Designing Your Book Cover With @AuthorhelenJ appeared first on Sacha Black.

Shit. That makes me shallow doesn’t it?

Ah well, fuck it. At least I can admit it.

I’ve been thinking about marketing a LOT recently. Minus a total meltdown last week and a decision to bin (and subsequently re-write the last 30K of my book), I am still on track to send my book-baby to beta readers on 30th September.

Being the incessant 5 steps-a-head planner that I am, it means my mind is on marketing, book covers and that big ol’ scare-the-shitsicles-out-of-you decision: Do I run the poison, trap-infested gauntlet to a publishers door? Or drown in the overly saturated ‘Amazon’ rainforest of books as an indie? As it happens, I’ve finally made my mind up, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Book covers are without doubt, THE most important marketing decision you’ll make. Fuck it up, and you can watch your readers Foxtrot Oscar into the sunset, never to return to your bookshelf! So, I’m sharing my research and the lessons I’ve learnt in preparing to have my book cover designed.

Thing One – Genre

Know your genre. I know. Sounds like I took my stupid pull this morning cause of course you know. But seriously, think about it. You go into a bookstore and you can identify ‘your’ spot, you know the exact location your fave books will be in, just by looking at the shelves. No one read the signs anymore, we just look at the covers!

Scroll through – there are lots of covers in the gallery.

Those are some of the currently popular covers from the YA genre. You can tell a lot when you line a row of books up. I can often be found, detective specs on, snooping in a Waterstones (or #GoogleTranslate: Barnes and Noble). I actually have an album on my phone dedicated to book covers. I snoop. Take Photo. Repeat. I collect them in order to deconstruct and analyse their make up.

Even from the small selection in the slide show, you can see there are clear themes to all these YA (generally fantasy) covers:

• Most have a clear theme or symbol from their stories represented centrally in the cover
• Bold colours. Lots of blues, whites and blacks.
• More often than not with yellow or white writing.
• The book title is larger than the author’s name
• The book titles are generally less than 3 or 4 words, and more often just one word
• There’s a variety of placements of the title words from the top to the centre and even to the lower quartile of the book so placement seems more about overall fit than a formulaic style
• Of the 18 books included, only 4 have an obvious image of a person on the cover. One other has very small figures in the distance. But for this genre it doesn’t seem essential to have a figure or body part on them. Unlike say, romance.

The point is, don’t make assumptions. Markets and genres release new books constantly. Which means the tropes and themes within those genres are always evolving. When you need a cover creating, stop and analyse the top 30 books in your genre to see what the themes are.

Thing Two – Same, Same but Different 

Why examine book covers in your genre when you want your cover to be different? Well, let’s pretend we’re bitchy school girls. To get in with the cool crowd you need to be the same as them but unique enough you’re valuable the Queen Bee.

If your book is on a shelf in Waterstones, you want it to be identifiable within your genre. But you also need to be different enough that it actually stands out to readers (in the milliseconds they glimpse your book).

Normally I’d tell you comparing is a plague, its second only to the plague of self-doubt. But when it comes to covers it is essential to collect and compare so you know what you’re up against, what tropes you need to follow and what you can happily avoid in order to stand out.

Simply – follow the key (reoccurring) patterns in your genre but in your own way.

Thing Three – Write Your Own DETAILED Brief

If you’re rolling your eyes, because you’re giving your cover to a designer therefore it’s not your problem, then stop rolling and listen up.

If you’re an indie author, the cover is down to you. If you’re going to pay out for a designer you might as well make sure you get what you want. The more detail you can give upfront the less iterations you will go through and the less it will cost you. Most designers have a limited number of changes they will make, which is why this is so important.

Give as much detail as you can, including:

• Target audience and genre
• Colour schemes
• Spellings (REALLY important)
• Examples of other covers you like AND importantly examples of ones you don’t like too
• If you have a preference on layout
• Any conceptual information, i.e. if you want a symbol or particular ‘image included, like a door or a key’
• Whether you want a person in the cover and if you do, whether you want it realistic or otherwise
• If you have a preference on style or type of typography /font 
• Whether you want an eBook or print or both versions
• If you have a short synopsis why not send it with your brief

Thing Four – Colour Matters

Study your genre, but also ask yourself what fits your story? If it’s a dark story you need dark colours and vice a versa.

On font colour, keep it simple. Opposing colours to the ‘main’ book colour work well, and as you can see in the slide show, the YA books mostly have white or yellow font. Your designer will advise you, but it helps if you go in knowing what you want so you don’t change your mind two months after you launch it.

Thing Five – Fonts

I don’t profess to be an expert on fonts, and again your designer will help with this, but if there are fonts you like in your genre, show them to your designer. You need to decide if the font is the focal part of your cover or if the image/symbol is. This determines how fontalicious  you can go with your typography.

BookCoverDesigner has a great post on fonts and what are well used fonts on covers.

Thing Six – What’s Your Symbol?

Your cover needs to symbolise something – your story, obvs!

Even if you don’t have a physical symbol on your cover, like a lot of the YA books do, you need to somehow symbolise your story in the cover. Perhaps using your books central theme.

How do you do this? The same way you write. Show don’t tell. The TED talk below is all about book design and the same reasoning goes for covers as it does writing.

Readers, much to our writerly surprise, aren’t idiots. I know. I know. It’s a hard pill to swallow. But really, they do interpret and infer, so you can be somewhat abstract when it comes to your cover. Especially if you have a nifty title giving the reader context.

Last But Not Least – Thing Seven – Details. Details. Details

While your designer is shimmying up a book cover, think about whether you need a thumbnail image, a spine and back cover for print books. Do you need additional marketing materials?

Such as:

• Business cards with book designs on them
• Bookmarks
• Postcards
• Physical posters and Banners
• eMaterials for Facebook or twitter or any other social media
• Merchandise with covers or symbols on them

The world is your oyster – but economies of scale apply. Once you have designs it doesn’t take much for your designer to add them to a little something-something else!

If you found this post useful, why not sign up for lots more handy tips and tricks, for FREE. Sign up here.

The post 7 Things You Need To Know to Master Your Genre's Book Cover appeared first on Sacha Black.

Having scrutinised it, I have to say I highly recommend it as a design site. For those of you who don’t have photoshop and illustrator its the perfect substitute. It has a plethora of professional looking templates for everything from book covers, blog photos, infographics, flyers, posters, cover photos… anything you could want it has pre made templates which you can edit to your hearts desire.

If you want to increase your blog traffic next year I am certain this tool will help.

ONE – Templates Galore

Canva has templates with the optimised sizes and pixels for everything from:

Every type of social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. It has a variety of book cover templates with fully customisable functions, magazines, letters, presentation templates, infographics, album covers, cover photos for all social media, invitations, event designs and much more.

TWO – Infographics

The reason I find this such a useful tool is for its infographic capabilities. I have for a long time, searched for a tool with the mechanism to create infographics for free. With Canva, as long as you have your own photos or use their free ones – you can. Every image you create otherwise is the standard price of a dollar.

Infographics if you don’t know, are long thin images with standout facts and figures, or hints and tips,  this is one I created in just a few minutes.

I know infographics aren’t everyones cup of tea, but they are hugely popular on Pinterest, which drives an obscene amount of traffic to my site – if you want to up your traffic this is a no brainer, especially if you get them onto Pinterest.

THREE  – Attracting Traffic

Everyones knows photos attract people to your media, I wrote about how to create them in this post: 4 Easy Steps To Seriously Awesome Blog Post Photos. This is a catch all site that gives you the ability to create photos and media for all your sites in one quick go AND they are already set up in eye catching templates. Which means, traffic, traffic, traffic.

FOUR – Functionality

It’s functionality its intuitive. With a panel on the left for all the icons and an easy drag and drop system into the main panel for anything you want to pop into your graphics.

Fonts are changeable, text moveable and just about everything can be edited. If you can use wordpress, you can use Canva. Not because it looks and works the same, but because its as simple and intuitive as wordpress.

It also has a tutorial if you get stuck.

FIVE – Motivation & Inspiration

Have ever wanted to have a book cover before your book is finished? You know just to see? To play around and see what it would be like to have your name on a cover?

Maybe for motivational purposes to help you carry on but you can’t afford a designer incase your book changes and the cover needs to as well. Well Canva is your tool.

I made a pretend cover for Adultland, the second novel I am drafting as a result of this writespiration. Clearly this isn’t what I would put on the actual cover, firstly I’d get it designed professionally, I’d want a girl walking up the path anyway and it’s not right on a lot of levels. But, it is motivational. Plus not having published anything yet, it was kind of cool to see my name on a book. Definitely motivation to hurry the F up!!

Thoughts? Have you ever used Canva? Have you created a pretend cover to drive you on? What kind of graphics do you use? What do you think of infographics?

If you liked this post, subscribe here to get more FREE writing tips, tools and inspiration as well as information on the release of my books.

The post 5 Mind Boggling Reasons Canva is YOUR Blogging Design Heaven appeared first on Sacha Black.

I have had a couple of lovely compliments recently about the photos I use to start my posts, (thank you, and blush!). But what it’s resulted in, is me sharing my photo tweaking knowledge with others. So I thought it might be useful to share that knowledge with everyone else.

If you would like to know how to make photos like mine, or ones in your own style, then read on.

Now before I start, I want to draw your attention to an awesome post by Helen. She wrote about the pitfalls of using any old photo, instead of ensuring they are copyright free or your own images. Check it out, it’s called Before You Publish.

Let me first begin adding a caveat to this post too. I always make a point of trying to find websites with copyright free images, pay for images myself, or use ones I have taken. I wrote this post of my own volition, any websites I mention are not paying me to promote them, I am sharing those that I use, find helpful or have been told are helpful. You must first check terms and conditions on all sites as they are ALL different, or else use photos at your own risk.

Right now the boring bits out the way lets talk about the fun stuff.

If you aren’t a hot-shot photographer than you are going to need a supply of photos to edit.

ONE – WHERE CAN YOU GET PHOTOS?

There are lots of paid places which cost a varying amount, I personally use Fotalia, as recommended by Ali, and I have to say it is excellent. 44 million photos or something it has, careful – you can end up wasting 45 minutes looking for a photo – which I did Sunday night looking for one for my 8 Steps to Cracking The YA Mindset. *foreheadslap*

As general points – If you are careful and use the paid ones for special posts, then the credits last ages. I have only used 4 I think of the 26 I purchased and that was only about 20 quid, and I have been using photos for ages.

PAID AND FREE PLACES – in no particular order

1. Fotalia – paid for

2. Deposit photos – paid for

3. Stockvault has a variety of images both paid for and free – Hint – Paid for ones are the ones displayed in a black background at the top and bottom of the free section which is in white!

4. Graphic Stock – paid for

5. Death to Stock Photos – free

6. Free Images has a mix of free and paid for images

7. Stocksnap – free

8. unsplash – free

9. Gratisography – free

10. Negative Space free

11. PicJumbo – free

12. New Old Stock – for vintage photos and a mix of paid for packs and some free photos

13. Creative Commons + Flicker – possibly the two most famous places to get images – creative commons is widely known as a source of copyright free images. It will link you to flicker too hence the joint point. Scroll down until you find the section that says ‘Find CC Material’ and type in your search.

If this isn’t enough  – here are two post one, post two, with 37 sites between them for a variety of free and paid for images.

TWO – CHOOSING PHOTOS

When choosing photos there are a couple of things to bear in mind.

1. If your topic is on the perils of editing, make sure you choose a photo that’s relevant – a typewriter or a book, whatever, use your imagination, but if you start posting photos of a lion eating a safari truck, or a kid sat doing a poop on the toilet people are going to think you’re a) bonkers and b) not credible. That’s not to say you can’t be abstract, but having some kind of link to what you are saying is important.

2. Which means – send a message. Use the photo to give a message in a way your writing can’t.

3. I have found myself liking a particular style of photos, for me personally, I like to stick to that style. It gives a kind of branding to your imagery. If you are consistent after a while people see a photo and instantly recognise it as yours.

THREE – BEFORE YOU EDIT

1. I have a thing for consistency. I always use the same font across all my photos, posts, business cards, you name it, if I can edit it, then it will be in the same font. Like point 3 above there is a benefit to being consistent. You build your own brand, people recognise your stuff. BUT, like all things, rules are meant to be broken. One example is this. Where I used several different fonts all in one go. The way I kept consistency was to only use three colours for the font.

2. Light and dark distribution – when you pick a photo it’s important to consider what colour text you want to over lay on it. If for example you want a dark photo to represent a horror story or a post about writing horror stories, you can’t then over lay dark text on it. See the photo – can you even read the text? Yeah, exactly!

3. Text colour options – Now we each have our own style, so don’t feel obliged to do what I am saying, you may hate my style. The important thing is you find your own style and designs. I am just sharing what I do.

I like to (although not always) pick out the colours in the photo for the text so that they blend. Hence you can see orangey yellows around the skulls and the same sort of colour for the text. But I have used completely contrasting photos and it has just as good an impact.

4. Who are you? If you have something you want to promote then you need to make sure you label it on the photo. I always include my website address and if the post is part of a series, I try to put that on there too.

5. Busy photos – be wary, busy photos can be very hard to overlay text on. Text can become lost or the colours of the text don’t show up enough to pop against the busy background.

FOUR – MAKING MAGIC

Here’s the bones of it. It kinda depends whether you have a Mac or a PC. I have a Mac, which isn’t going to help many people. But our trusty Geoffle will explain for PC users. There are three ways you can edit photos simply.

ONE – MAC USERS

You could spend money and buy software – Mac’s have the App store and a simple google will tell you the right apps. I have Photoshop and illustrator – I do use them, but most of the time I don’t. I use the very simple and basic photo viewing software ‘Preview’. That’s what it looks like. I believe ‘Paint’ in windows is of a similar ilk. If you open a photo in your Macbook it will open using preview, and look something like this:

This is where the magic happens. To get your tool bar up, which is the row of icons. You need to press the suitcase – the suitcase is usually grayed out until you click it, like so.

This then appears:

These are the icons you need to edit photos. The ‘T’ is for a text box. It appears when you click it with the words ‘text’ in it and then you can type whatever you like it in and move them wherever you want. Add as many text boxes etc as you like.

The letter ‘A’ on the far right is your ‘font’ box, where you can change sizes, colours, fonts, alignments etc.

If you ever want to crop an image highlight the shape you want using your normal cursor ensuring the dotted square on the very left is highlighted and then the ‘crop’ button will appear.

TWO – INTERNET USERS

Another method for editing photos is online. There are various websites that will let you edit photos. For example, Pic Monkey, which gives a free trial – but then you have to pay monthly for its use. It does come highly recommended by Ali though. I believe Fotor is another site, but a quick google should tell you.

THREE – PC USERS

Over to you Geoffle:

You can use Paint. If you haven’t found this yet you can either open Paint by clicking the Start button , clicking All Programs, clicking Accessories, and then clicking Paint. Or you can choose a picture and right click to bring up the drop down menu. If you click on ‘Open with’ you will find Paint as an option. Or you can choose a picture and right click to bring up the drop down menu. If you click on ‘Open with’ you will find Paint as an option.

As Sacha explains with her Mac programme, Paint allows you to add text. Click on the A on the tool bar and this will provide you with a text box and the usual range of options. I’ve used a cool photo to give you an example. You can see the text box which can be moved and expanded as you like.

The same principle concerning croping applies here too.

Thanks Geoffle. If you didn’t know, he has just released a new book, called my Father and other liars. You can read his guest post on differentiating dialogue, and buy his books: My Father and Other Liars and Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle.

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