Author: K.S. Brooks

K.S. Brooks is an award-winning novelist, photographer, and photo-journalist, author of over 30 titles, and executive director and administrator of Indies Unlimited. Brooks is currently a photo-journalist and chief copy editor for two NE Washington newspapers.  She teaches self-publishing and writing topics for the Community Colleges of Spokane, and served on the Indie Author Day advisory board. For more about K.S. Brooks, visit her website and her Amazon author page.

How to Make an eBook Cover in Publisher

publisher logoMaking a book cover in Microsoft Publisher is extremely easy. If you don’t have MS Publisher, I’m sorry, I don’t really know any comparable alternatives in freeware or on Macs. (If you know of one, please feel free to let us know, and if you’d like to write a guest post about it – even better!) I’ve been using Publisher for a ridiculously long time, and that’s what works for me.

There are so many options in Publisher, I could never talk about all of them in this article. Nor do I probably know how to use all of them. I’m a simple person – and keeping it simple works for me. I’m using MS Office 2010. If you are using a different version, some of this will look weird to you, but the basics remain the same.

Open Publisher. Select blank (portrait mode) from the options under New. Continue reading “How to Make an eBook Cover in Publisher”

Anthems for Authors – Wrapped up in Books

This song, Wrapped up in Books, by Belle and Sebastian makes me want to put my smart librarian glasses on, get a bunch of college students, and film a video in a library. Each student could be reading a different book (since I’ve authored more than twenty at this point) and how cute would that be? I just need to find a band who could write a song and work my titles in and…oh well, never mind. That sounds like too much work. I’ll just sit back and enjoy their video instead.

Like Anthems for Authors? You can see more here.

Title Envy

hidden title 120x177Author, oh author, why is your title so tiny? Don’t you want your book to have a big title, like the other books do? I know you do. And I know you know that size matters.

Then why, oh why, are you not using the space on your book’s cover to better display your title? What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?

This perplexes me. This drives me up the wall. This makes me want to scream.

When you post a book to Thrifty Thursday or Print Book Party, do you just leave? Do you not come back to see your spiffy book cover looking all happy on our pages? Because if you did – you might see that no one can read your title.

The majority of what I’m seeing lately looks like this: Continue reading “Title Envy”

When Your Writing Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself

ksbnynySome people write as therapy. Some people let their subconscious write. These are both cognizant choices that are made by the author as part of their craft. I’m not talking about either of those.

Have you ever written something that just popped onto the screen? Some strange character backstory – something instrumental in forming the character’s personality – and then thought, “Well, that’s weird. But it works, so I’ll leave it.” Has that ever happened to you? Continue reading “When Your Writing Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself”