Tag: writing

There are a lot of tools that you, as an author, can use to help entice readers to pick up your book and invite them to read it.

The most obvious of these are the Cover Image, Title, Tag Line and Description.

However, once they’ve passed these and opened your book to scan it, there are many things you can do to further pique their interest and entice them. Many of these are formatting items that are easy to do.

However, you’ll also find a raft of authors with excuses as to why you can’t, or shouldn’t, do most of them. Thus, for each element, I’ll cover why I think you should do it, how it helps pull the potential reader in and the ease with which you can incorporate it. Then, for each, I’ll also try and counter any argument for not doing it.

Let me briefly cover covers (pun intended)

Obviously, your cover should be attractive. But other elements you should think about are balance, contrast, bold colors and an easy to read title, tag line and author’s name.

Some of the biggest mistakes we notice are:

• Fancy fonts that are hard or impossible to read. Typically, the fancier the font the more difficult it is to read.
• Text colors that don’t stand out and are hard to read.
• Black or dark backgrounds that drowned out text and images. Mystery and Dark Fantasies are notorious for this.
• Author’s names. The latest trend is to emphasize the author’s name, above all else. Personally, unless your famous or an author I follow, your name is not important to me. And, I don’t want to have to hunt for your title and the genre of your story.

Speaking of tag lines, yours should not give anything away, leave the reader with a question and strongly help hint at the genre your story is in.

Finally, pay attention to your cover’s spine.

Remember, 90% of the time, that’s all that a potential reader will see when it’s on a shelf.

Is it attractive and easy to read?

Does your title reflect your stories genre?

Forward and onward to the inside.

Oh, as an aside, we’re often asked who edited our stories and who designed our covers. So, we’ve gotten into the habit of including who did each, on the copyright page.

Chapter Titles and Table of Contents

Many authors either don’t use a table of contents or only list chapter numbers.

We think doing so is a missed opportunity to help further pique a reader’s interest. When we open a book, one of the first things we come to is the Table of Contents. If there are Chapter titles, we’ll scan them to learn more and see where the author may be taking their story.

Chapter titles like:

• London Calling
• Fireman Fireman Light My Fire
• Kusadasi and Ephesus, Turkey
• Life Changes in an Instant.

All try to leave the potential reader with a bit of the story and/or a question.

Great, they go to London… and Turkey. What changes their life in an instant? Oh wow, fireman sex!

Many authors will tell you it’s hard to come up with chapter titles. Also, that they give away too much of the story. True, they may not be easy at first, but once you get used to adding them, they’ll get easier. You’ll also quickly learn not to give anything away.

After you’ve finished a chapter and moved into the beginning of the next, go back and ask what the previous chapter is about. Where does it take place? What’s the point of the chapter? Who’s the main character and what happens to them? From that, build a one to five word title. Just be sure it doesn’t give anything away.

• Larry… heads to London… runs away… starts a new life.
• A flower is more than a flower.
• A new spell is cast.
• A new clue is discovered.
• Christin questions his… decision… life… choice.

None of these really give anything away but do hint at a story element. Travel. Discovering Nature. Witchcraft (or Romantic Enticement). Mystery/Crime Solving. Self-Discovery.

Table of Contents

A second argument against a Table of Contents is that building a TOC is a pain and too hard.

Not so, if you use Microsoft Word to build your manuscript. With one click, Word will automatically build your TOC. This can be done at any time as you develop your manuscript.

First, make sure all of your chapter headings and titles are entered as “Headings”.

Select where you want to insert your TOC and click on the location. We usually add a page break after the copyright page and then click on the top of the new page.

Then go to “References” at the top of your Word document and select “Table of Contents” on the far left.

From there, select the style TOC you want and click on it.

Word will automatically build and insert your TOC on the new page.

Two additional features of Word’s automatic TOC are that you can update the whole table or just the page numbers at any time. This makes updating the whole table easy as you add chapters and allows a final page number update when you’ve finished your manuscript.

White Space

For us, there is nothing worse than opening a book and staring at page after page crammed with words.

As a reader, we need hints from the author as to when: to pause, scenes change, the story shifts to a new POV, dialogue changes, something in the story needs to be emphasized, and so on.

All of these can be indicated by punctuation but adding white space (an extra line before a new paragraph, addition of a scene break, use of bullet points, a new paragraph for each speaker) helps emphasize a change to the reader.

As important, white space helps relax the reader. Extra line spacing, increased margins, spacing between paragraphs, adding scene breaks, all allow the reader to pause and take a breath. Authors also use white space to help direct the readers speed, place emphasis where they want and, in effect, control the pace of the story.

Aesthetically, white space also makes the story more appealing by giving the reader the impression that the author’s main concern is presenting an attractive story.

The biggest argument given by authors for not adding white space is increased page count and printing cost. However, increasing the margins, line spacing and paragraph spacing would result in about a 10% increase in page count. Using Amazons printing cost, a 10% increase in page count for a 350 page novel would result in about a 40 cent increase in printing cost. This would increase the total cost to the author from approximately $4.50 to $4.90.

Font Style and Size

Last, but not least, keep your font style simple and the size no less than 12. The fancier the font, typically the harder it is to read. Also, the size and weight of the fancier fonts tend to vary considerably, often making them hard to read.

Summary

We have tried to mention the key things that we believe will attract readers to your book. These are the things we look for when selecting a book and things we’ve noticed others look for or at. In contrast, we’ve never seen a reader put back a book because it had a TOC with chapter titles, too much white space, clear font, or even too many pages.

We have however, seen many times when a reader mumbled “How am I supposed to read this with – such tiny print?” Or, “- with the pages so jammed with words?”

Several authors have mentioned additional things you can do to make your book more attractive. Most of these we consider as enhancements or extras. But, if you think of something we missed, please let us know.

In the meantime, happy writing.