I do a lot behind the scenes at Holo Writing, from actual novel-writing to handling our graphic design, marketing, and social media presence. One of my most recent projects has been teaching myself to design eBooks in Adobe InDesign*, and this is the fruit of that! 😀
Then I figured, while I’m updating the guts, I might as well update the cover, too, especially now that The Gordian Protocol has officially made Jacob a National Bestselling Author! 😲 Man, does it feel good to put that on a cover. 🤩
And so, without further ado, say hello to the new eBook edition of The Dragons of Jupiter!
*An FYI for aspiring authors: We’d previously hired eBook Launch to handle our eBook formatting, and they’re fantastic, but now that we’re definitely In This For The Long Run, I figured it would be good to learn how to build our indie books from the bottom up.
I mainly chose InDesign because I already had access to it through Adobe’s Creative Cloud and figured I might as well get my subscription’s worth. Plus, I like that it allows me to have infinitesimally specific control over what’s in my files (even if it’s a beast to learn 😬).
However, I wanted to add for the emerging authors who want a simpler, less technical mode of eBook production: Vellum is reputed to be an awesome piece of software, and at just $100, should probably be one of your first purchases as an indie if you plan on publishing lots of books. For comparison, paid formatting for us often costs $100ish PER eBOOK.
We didn’t know about Vellum when we started – if it even existed back then – but I wish we had, as having direct control over your eBook files makes it A LOT easier (and cheaper) to update internal links and booklists, change front and back matter, etc. As quickly as marketing strategies change in the indie publishing industry, any software that can help you nimbly alter your product to suit the market is Good Software To Have.
Personally, I’ve only played with the trial version of Vellum (and found it wondrously easy to use), but I have author buds who use it regularly and love it.
Hope this helps those of you who are just getting started! 😊