This week, I finished reading Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. It’s a lively and fun story set in an Expanse-like future, but this isn’t a book review :) Rather, I’m asking a question of Amazon: what’s up with the variation in print quality between Kindle Direct Publishing books printed at the same facility, within just a few months of each other?

There are plenty of videos out there that show you what hardcover print-on-demand books look like, at least at a superficial level. But readers see these books from only a few inches away. How does the quality compare to books printed by the big publishers?

If you’re like me, you may have read hundreds of books, without ever giving a second thought to the font that all that text was set in. But as a self-published author, you have to choose that font. Which turns out to be surprisingly hard!

After a long and careful search, you’ve finally found the cover artist of your dreams. How do you work with them to produce a great cover that will help sell your book?

All right, so you’ve decided to commission a custom illustration for your book cover. With a bit of luck and a truckload of hard work, your book’s gonna come out looking great! But what should you expect from this process, in practical terms?

In my previous blog post about the purpose of book covers, my examples all had custom cover illustrations. And to get one of those, you need a cover artist! But there have been plenty of very successful science fiction and fantasy books whose covers don’t feature custom illustrations.

Everyone knows you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But we all do it anyway.