Every good book needs a great cover. It’s a powerful billboard for conveying the spirit and content of your book. An eye-catching cover can persuade readers to pick up and buy a book. But a jacket that’s confusing or boring or worse, can stop a potential buyer from giving that same book a second glance. [...]

Does my book really need an index? And I have to pay the indexer?  Wait, isn’t that the publisher’s job?  OK, well can I just put it together myself? I often hear questions like these from authors I work with. So I explain that an index is an indispensable tool for almost every non-fiction book. [...]

Nothing in the publishing process seems to provoke more conflict than designing the book jacket. Every editor, designer, sales person and publicist in the company can have a different point of view, often causing intense turf battles, expensive start-overs, blown production schedules, and snarky rants hurled between colleagues like: “Sure, go ahead with that pretentious [...]

Editors pray for the perfect book title: a tight high-concept combination of words that crystallizes the content and intention of the work. A title so scintillating and irresistible that millions of readers want to run out and buy this book immediately. Eureka! It happens. Think of Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Men are from [...]