About BCB

For the past few months, I’ve been trying to help authors, especially independent authors, who are struggling with book cover design. Covers, whether for printed books or ebooks, can make or break sales for an author. Unfortunately many authors don’t really know how to design a cover, or where to go to find a designer.

Who am I? Well my name is Robin Nuttall. I’ve been a professional graphic designer for over 20 years, and currently own my own business, DD Graphix. And yes, I do book cover design (and web design, and posters, banners, business cards, books, and pretty much anything else involving graphical representation of ideas or data).

So, you’re asking; is this blog just a sophisticated advertisement to get authors to pay me to design their covers? No. It is not. Now I’ll be honest. If authors read the blog and decide to hire me that’s great; I’d love to have the work. But book cover design is a very small part of my overall business, which is mostly centered around the dog show world; I’ve been showing and training dogs even longer than I’ve been a professional designer.

BCB has several purposes, all geared toward an end goal of helping authors sell their work through effective, beautiful cover design. To that end, BCB will:

• Discuss and sometimes teach basic design and typography skills and tenets; typeface help, where to find clipart, etc.
• Cultivate a community of talented artists and designers for authors to utilize. Listings will be free, but not everyone will be listed; I intend to list truly talented people; not everyone advertising themselves as a cover designer is actually good at what they do and yes, I reserve the right to choose!
• Solicit cover submissions from artists and authors for critique by me and also of course by other designers. Beware, constructive criticism can sometimes be a bit startling; just keep in mind that the overall goal is to help, not harm.

BCB is not a place to advertise your book or books for sale. We will not be discussing book content at all, except in relation to how genre affects cover design. Blatant advertising ploys will not be tolerated. BCB will hopefully be a tool for you, the author, to use to help you effectively reach your target audience!

I can always be reached at robin@bookcoverblog.com