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About

Desmond Shepherd is the author of many novels and short stories, including the emotionally gripping tale Imaginary Me and the episodic series The Permanent Man. He writes for your enjoyment, to stimulate imagination and to provide an escape from your everyday life. He thanks you for reading the fictional journeys he writes.

He resides in an old farm house in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wonderful wife and three children.

   

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Designing a Book Cover - The Fourth Layer

 In my last post, I spoke about "The Third Layer" in my process of designing book covers. That was adding the author name. I also likened layers one through three to being a cake. It's baked. The layers are stacked. And it's edible. But in order to entice someone to eat the cake, the final decorations—icing, color, flowers, etc.—need to be added. So what can I do with my current book cover to spruce it up? The Fourth Layer of course! This is the crucial and final layer. This is where everything comes together to form the complete book cover. The steps I use below are my own. You'll need to determine what is needed for your cover when you get to this layer. Only you know your book. Only you know what's important. The Fourth Layer is where you can get creative. First, I want to continue with the older adventure book type feel. With The Legend of Kyd Lumin , I want people to think it's a book not published in 2021 but rather, published sometime in the 80'
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Designing a Book Cover - The Second Layer

In my last post , I discussed how I go about designing covers for my book. That post covered "The First Layer" , which is the main background cover image. So off to "The Second Layer"! What is it? That would be the book title. It's important to make the title stand out properly. Doing so is the difference between a book cover that looks professional and one that screams mediocrity. Remember, often the cover is the first impression of a book. If the cover is boring and drab, potential readers will assume your book is, too. I know, I know. "Don't judge a book by its cover." But, well, that's the first thing people often do, whether consciously or not. Pick a font that pops and don't just use the default settings for the font. Vary and alter it to the best of your ability to give it some life. A good way to do this is to research book covers in the genre you wrote. Pay attention to how the title is presented. For The Legend of Kyd Lumin , whic
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Designing a Book Cover - The Third Layer

In my last post, I spoke about "The Second Layer" of designing a book cover, which is making sure you title stands out well.  Now we head to "The Third Layer". This one probably will seem obvious and it complements "The Second Layer" . It is your author name. It's important that your author name be positioned and sized correctly. There are a few approaches to this. For well known authors—for instance Stephen King or James Patterson—having the author name prominent and big on the cover is good. The reason is, their names are so popular that the author name sells the book more so than the book title sells it. As a self-published author you could use this thought process for your cover to give the impression that you are a popular author. Of course, your mileage will vary with this approach. The other option is to not allow the author name to dominate the content. So you would want it to be smaller than the title. You could even make it barely noticeable
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