Thinking About Design

I got to thinking about how to improve my book cover and realized that undone know a thing about designing a book cover. The obvious thing to do is to read a blog, right? That's what I thought. I found Humble Nations @ http://humblenations.com/ did a good job of confirming just what I had suspected: I'm clueless about design.

I was hasty publishing. Very hasty because I was up against some deadlines that had nothing to do with this book, or any book. Basically I imposed a deadline on myself for a pretty bad reason. I was excited to get it on the shelf... Now that I have a bunch of extra time I am rethinking some of those decisions.

The book is all about the layman businessman figuring things out that are outside the skill set of the business. That means you are trying to cut your cost by doing everything you can yourself. It save you cash and it is more fulfilling. But you might do it twice, or three times, before you are comfortable with the results. So, here I am with a book on the Internet about marketing your business on the Internet and my cover sucks. See that linkage? I'm not expert at this stuff, but I am learning at every turn and I will be an expert with the help of the tools that are readily available on the Internet.

Internet, Internet, Internet...

That's funny, right? I'm getting an oil change at the dealership. Ms. Marie's Jeep was behind on recalls and services so here I am sitting for two hours. So, I'm filling my idle time thinking about how to get more out of my business. All of my businesses. On the Internet. I'm on the Internet trying to figure out how to better promote my book about promoting your business on the Internet. This Internet thing is big.

Back to the point. I haven't solved anything except for thinking about the irony. The original book cover was made from a word cloud. They are neat to play with so I got caught up in the neatness and some other geeky people though so too. So I took the first half of the book and pasted it into a website to get a picture of the words all jumbled up. It looks neat to me but doesn't do anything but puts some words out there. It wasn't a very smart move and I wish that I hadn't been so hasty. Have you ever said that to yourself? This is my first time, but anyway. All I needed was a cover with a title and my name. That's exciting. I had a cover with my name on it! But it is ugly. It is ugly. No doubting that, but I didn't think it mattered. It matters. I say that a lot in the book.

Now I have to figure this thing out. But i have no idea how to do it. I will. Soon.

But now my oil change is done.