By the Campfire with Stuart

I'd like to introduce you to Dan. Of course, the best introduction is to read Lesson One: Revolution!, but what I'm talking about today is the @Dan Starney account on Twitter. Mostly just to have a little fun, but also for marketing, I decided to create an account for Dan to comment on current events as well as politics and government. That would be a Dan sort of thing to do, don't you think? So if you're a Twitter user, go follow Dan, harrass him a bit, and tell him I said hello. :) Read on to see a few tweets from Dan.

Well, here it is. Maybe? This is what I'm planning for the new cover of Lesson One: Revolution! (Second Edition). This cover meets most or all of my cover requirements. However, it's not too late to scrap this and start over on the cover, and I've had some mixed reviews on it, so I'm hoping to get more feedback.

You can click on the small cover image on my blog to open a larger version of the image in a new tab or browser window. If you like it, hate it, or somewhere in between, please leave a comment or otherwise contact me.

Read on for more background on the cover design process.

What do the covers of Wolf Block, Take Five! for Better Photos, and Journey to Yandol, and other stories have in common? Despite looking very different and not all being in the same genre, they have one important design element in common. Like the fake Rudy's Revenge cover illustrating this blog post, all of them were created using 3D modeling software. This relates to the topic of this blog post, because 3D modeling software can give indie authors something that many want: A custom book cover, unlike any other, for free. Read on for more about this approach to making a cover, including details for how the Rudy's Revenge cover was created.

There's more to fantasy than an unlikely backwoods hero seeking to defeat the evil overlord, and in Khaiblan Rewound (a working title only), I intentionally decided to depart from that common plot to make my first foray into the sword-and-sorcery subgenre. NaNoWriMo is a good opportunity to experiment with new things, since it's only a one-month commitment, and I started Khaiblan Rewound for NaNoWriMo in 2011. If you click the link above leading to the story, you'll see it goes to Wattpad rather than a place to buy it, because I still have not completed the story. Inspired by the creative openness of Ksenia Anske, I decided to begin posting first-draft chapters of Khaiblan Rewound on Wattpad to see if I could get any input from readers. To date, I've posted two chapters. Reader input? Well, not yet.

One of the common ideas you will find in discussions about entrepreneurial activity and business development is that you should pay close attention to what you measure, because what you choose to measure also defines where you focus your attention. In turn, this often (but not always) leads to improvements in the area(s) being measured. This is applicable to indie writers. Unless you are writing only for enjoyment, with zero interest in sharing your work with others, your writing goals will be best served by treating your writing as a business. This is true whether you are cranking out a new novel every month or you only plan to publish one book in your life.