#self publishing

[rubyjones]

Create your own book cover - without generative 'AI' | Ruby Jones

Get more from Ruby Jones on Patreon

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

[Edit:] this is getting well outside this account's usual reach and a few people in the notes are making not so great comments about the fact I write weird erotica. So, for full disclosure: yes, I am an erotica writer. And the book covers include those for tentacle erotica and robot erotic romance. But you cannot see anything NSFW. All of these covers were approved by Amazon. Frankly, the cover of the most NSFW story, Oviposition, is downright tame! And to those complaining about the word 'Oviposition', that is a scientific word for a naturally occurring phenomenon - it's only naughty if you know the content of the story, which is only alluded to as 'sexy'.

I also do not believe that shirtless men require a warning, but yeah, two of the covers have shirtless men. The cover with a tasteful nude drawing (showing a bum, but not a weenor) has already been censored.

I can't do anything about the version of this post that got rb'd by a popular person, but for those who are concerned, consider this your content warning.

[the-ria]

I'm back with a new zine! It's an essay about the current state of the music industry, the importance of community and independent local art through the lens of war.

This project has been in the works for a couple of months and has been on my mind for even longer, I really hope you like it!

As always, here's the link to a completely free high res version of the zine, so you can print it out yourself!

[promptcalender]

Piece of advice to all writers who need a cover but don’t have the money to hire an artist: use the public domain.

Online, you can find quite a lot databases for photography in the public domain that you could use (always check their specific rules regarding commercial use), like Pixabay, Unsplash, or Pexels.

But, even a tad more charming, there are also hundreds of thousands of paintings in the public domain. If the artist has been dead for over 70 years, the image is (typically) in the public domain and can be used however you want it. This is not a new concept, big publishers like Penguin and the Oxford’s World Classics do the same!

When you use such images, always make sure that 1. the painting really is in the public domain (sometimes the art itself may be in the public domain, but not the photograph you are using!), and 2. that it is an appropriate image. Sometimes, an image may look innocent and fitting, but would actually cause irritation, like accidentally using a painting of siblings for a romance or using a controversial image for different reasons.

Some places you can find art in the public domain (always double check!): National Gallery of Art, Artvee, Public Domain Image Archive, and most websites of bigger museums.

[Prompt Calender: April 23rd, World Book and Copyright Day]

[sylifi]

Sweet Touch Official Release

After months of waiting, the first volume of the urban fantasy magical girl epic, Sweet Touch: Candy Hearts, is finally available!

Cover art by plgdd!

When Candy Clenson is chosen by a goddess to become Valley City's newest Magical Girl, she's nervous, but excited. Chosen heroes and magical girls are celebrities, they become actors, they get fame and fortune and they help run the world! Candy is eager to leave her life as a farm girl behind and become someone famous and popular for once in her life, and is ready to throw herself into the role. Unfortunately, her first night out goes horribly wrong, and she finds out she was given a dangerous power that inflicts a fate worse than death on the victims. What's worse, she can't turn the power off, making her a danger to everyone around her at any time.

Her teammates all have useful powers like time travel, physical attack projections, and the ability to move injuries from one person to another, and without being able to show off her own powers, Candy sees herself falling behind her team and the rest of the Valley City heroes. Without the option to get followers and attention from her abilities, Candy has to struggle along with nothing but her wings, her strength, and her determination to rise to the top despite her challenges.

Links below!

~

Barnes and Noble ebook! 

Kobo ebook!

Amazon ebook! (fuck Amazon, but if this is the only way you can read it, I understand.)

Goodreads! 

And here's the link to buy it physically!

My personal purchasing link, way cheaper than the regular cover price too!

~

This one took a while, I was actually writing it alongside my last book, which is why it came it so soon after The Feeling Of Being Valued! I had to break the book up into three parts, to be released every few months until the end of the year. Originally Sweet Touch Volumes 1-3 were all going to be one book, but that ended up being over 1000 pages, so I ended up splitting it into this volume about Candy, a collection of short stories that had been interspersed in the chapters, and finally volume 3, which wraps up Candy's story. This official release contains a bonus chapter that's only readable here, so even if you read the rough draft online last year, this version has new content and is much more polished than the old, outdated editions!

[mayakern]

Hot, messy and queer normative--Spitfire is a story for people who want to see bodies and brains like theirs in high fantasy romance.

If you like yearning, spicy sex scenes that leave the awkward bits in, and romance featuring fat and neurodivergent characters, this is your book.

Maya Kern Books

Spitfire is the first of four books about a somber prince, his shape-shifting dragon and their future queen. Unabashedly queer, it initially

[traegorn]

I hate shit like this so much.

So I get a lot of spam as an indie author with a social media presence. I get it on my TikTok, I get it in my email... and now I'm getting it in my Tumblr inbox.

This person has not read my book. Every detail on this comes from the blurb. And the "active readers" they're giving me "access" to are either just paid reviews, bots, or don't exist.

But if you're naive, and don't realize how predatory messages like this are, you might accidentally take them up on this nonsense, waste your money, and they'll move on to the next sucker.

Block them. Report them. Move on. It's a scam.

[k-m-nightwell]

Being a writer means I get to torture those I hold dear.

It builds character!