Review: Chock full of practical information for authors
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2013
Years ago, I had the audacity to write a book and publish it for the Amazon Kindle. With absolutely no experience or guidance in such things, I - entirely by accident and against all odds - managed to come up with a decent title and cover design. In his book "Titles & Covers That Sell," author Anbu Rayappan has replaced guesswork and luck with some tried and proven ways to create book titles and covers that will grab the prospective reader's attention. He compares a book cover with the front yard of a house that's for sale: an attractive yard will encourage a visitor to enter the house, while a messy yard creates a very bad impression and lack of interest.The book is concise but is loaded with practical information on creating book titles and cover designs. Fiction and nonfiction books have different requirements, and the author notes those differences. Among the ideas that I picked up were these:* With Amazon KDP, revising the cover design is very simple to do.* Titles should be four words or less, subtitles should be fifteen words or less, and why short titles are extremely important.* There are eight types of nonfiction titles.* How to gauge whether readers like your book title.* Using "power words" in your title.* Why the cover image is more important for fiction books than nonfiction.* Colors make a difference.The author notes that he uses professional cover designers for his own books, but this doesn't have to be expensive. It's even possible to have cover designers bidding against each other for your business.I was impressed with the amount of useful, practical ideas packed into this short book. I think that any would-be indie author would benefit from the information in the book.A review copy of the book was provided by the author.