Auromancer (Cyperpunk)

Day 28 of Thingadailies:

(For anyone reading backward, Thingadailies is a challenge to create a new thing every day during the month of February. I chose to do fake book covers in Affinity because I'm trying to get more comfortable using it so I can dump my Adobe InDesign subscription.)

I didn't have a plan for the day, so I decided to go with cyberpunk. Mostly because it's super easy to pick an image in DepositPhotos that will look striking on a cover. So here we are.

Font is Oxanium, because I couldn't justify using Flavors for this one.

Thingadailies wrap-up: While I may not be a pro, I'm at least as comfortable using Affinity Designer as I am using Adobe InDesign. That means I have a week to export all my InDesign covers and drop my subscription. I can do that.

Other than getting comfortable using Affinity, this month has improved my skills at picking an appropriate image to use, which is a huge win.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Medusa's Revenge (Fantasy)

Day 27 of Thingadailies:

I decided I wasn't done playing with the Flavors font, so I grabbed a fun picture and made up a title. It was quick and fun, and I still need to add the last scene on a story that I have to edit and send out to my Patreon supporters tomorrow, so sue me.

I like it.

One more day! What should I do? I'll have to think about it...

Bobcat, Lynx, and Mountain (YA Fantasy)

Day 26 of Thingadailies:

Honestly, some days (eg, yesterday) you spend a bunch of time trying to get something looking halfway decent and finally give up, and then other days you just throw something together in 10 minutes and go "huh, that looks pretty good!" (Yeah, it's because the image is right.)

I need to get to the grocery store anyhow, so I'm glad this just sort of fell together. The font is "Flavors".

Avast! (Fantasy)

Day 25 of Thingadailies:

As usual, I'm not convinced I really hit the mark with this one. My friend Richard was trying to find a title for his time-traveling pirates story, so I grabbed one of my suggestions for this challenge. I think time-traveling pirates might need a mashup of images, and I've been trying to focus on using one image and letting the typography do the heavy lifting.

This uses the font Princess Sofia. I wanted to use Black Sam's Gold, but the title was illegible when I tried, so... Princess Sofia it is. A true professional probably wouldn't give up after two tries.

Dash the Fire Out (Mystery)

Day 24 of Thingadailies:

I feel like I've been scraping the bottom of the title list barrel recently. Not because the titles are bad, necessarily, but because they don't really suggest a specific genre. But with this one, I decided it could be a mystery series following one character, who gets called Dash. Thus, Celia Dash, female noir detective was born.

I leaned into the absurdity and I kind of love it.

Back cover copy:

NO ORDINARY DAME…

Celia Dash inherited her father’s detective agency, his love of single-malt, and the bullet that killed him. Now she’s the one people turn to when they have nowhere else to go.

A torn letter leads Celia to an old mansion with a fresh corpse. With the cops on her trail and only her wits and her wiles to protect her, Celia must solve the murder — no matter what it takes!

The Trespassing Photographer's Mistake (Thriller/Mystery)

Day 23 of Thingadailies:

This took a couple tries, as my first attempt used a photo of a "dead" body and it screamed "DIY cover" no matter what I did. I suspect a professional could have edited the photo is such a way that it worked, but that person is not me.

This attempt worked out much better. I like the angles of the film strip. I couldn't decide on the font color, though. Black doesn't look quite right:

Black

Brown fits better, but I think it shifts the genre into... something that's not thriller/mystery. As much as I'd like to believe I'm making it up, I don't think I am.

Brown

I'd probably go with the brown, but it's a close call. (I'd probably also change the title if I was really publishing this, so there's that as well.)

In any case, I'm reasonably happy with how this came out.

A Court of Artichoke & Rue (2nd attempt)

Day 22 of Thingadailies:

Okay, usually I do one of these things, learn what I can from it, and move on. But my first attempt at this title was so bad that it's been nagging at me. This isn't professional-grade either (the sword is boring and the whole thing is just sort of blah, but I was trying to use assets I already owned), but it's leaps and bounds better than the last muddy mess.

I used the Prida01 font and learned how to make some of the letters fancy (Stylistic sets in the Typography section of the Character panel). That unlocks a whole new thing that I'd known was missing but hadn't yet tracked down.

Anyhow, it's way better than the last one. I'm getting better.

This Scimitar That Won Three Fields (Fantasy?)

Day 21 of Thingadailies:

This is both a success and a failure. I like it as a cover image (win!), but I don't think it really gives a clear genre indication (fail!). I think I'd have to choose a different cover image to lock in the genre. Or have a different title, though that was my starting point.

Lesson learned: Make sure your title fits in your genre or everything is downhill from there.

Anyhow, the title font is once again Annie Get Your Telescope. I have favorited it in my fonts list.

Yeah, that yellow/beige/brown color scheme is doing me no favors in the genre indication. Ah well. Maybe it's literary fiction?

The Case of the Wrong Backpack (Cozy Mystery)

Day 20 of Thingadailies:

I'm not really feeling this one, but the title wasn't really helping me here. If I was willing to try harder, I'd probably edit the vector image to have more bricks, which would make the title pop more. And the Henny Penny font might be a bit much.

But honestly? I was looking for comps on Amazon, and this is better than at least 90% of books with "The Case of the..." titles. So I guess there's that.

In other news, the shelter was looking for a kitten foster this morning (it went to someone else), so soon there will be kittens!

The Seven Roses of Shepherd Island (Fantasy)

Day 19 of Thingadailies:

I decided this title sounded like a fairy tale, so I aimed for that vibe.

I think it's reasonably successful?

Title font is Henny Penny.

An Affair to Forget (RomCom)

Day 18 of Thingadailies:

This one was kind of fun! I tried something a little different with the spread, using one rectangle with a gradient that covers the entire back, spine, and front. I think it works in this case.

(The fonts look fine in the hi-res version. They look kind of terrible here because I cut the file sizes down. I'm not sure if that would be a real problem. I don't think so.)

Barbed Wire Butcherbird (SF)

Day 17 of Thingadailies:

Today I spent a bit of time working out the guides (which are the lines you place to make sure things are lined up however you want them). For the most part, everything is straightforward, but since Affinity treats the paperback spread as one page, it means things get messed up when the spine width changes.

For comparison: Adobe InDesign treats the paperback spread as three pages: back cover, spine, and front cover. Then it jams them together to create one PDF. So when the width of the spine changes, it doesn't affect the guides on the front cover.

I was hoping I could tie some of the guides to the right side of the page (ie, a guide at -0.25 inches would be 0.25 inches from the right edge), but there's no way to do that. So... It's all kind of a pain in the butt, but it's not that hard to do the math. I'll just create a spreadsheet that does the calculations based on spine width and tells me where to put the guides.

Today's font: Tilt Neon

And the paperback spread:

Here's the back cover copy in all its cyberpunk glory:

Her Skin Holds the Fate of the World

Ten years ago, a drunken brawl left Yana unconscious in a back alley butchershop — a low-budget clinic where the pharma giants supply medtech in return for testing. 

Now Yana is The Butcherbird, the thief famous for getting past any security, thanks to the circuits living in her skin. With every job she takes, the list of people trying to catch her gets longer. Even her agent thinks she should retire.

But Yana hides a secret under her skin. The pharma giant that created her threatens the world’s very existence. And Yana may be the only one who can stop them…

Wild Guardian (Fantasy)

Day 16 of Thingadailies:

I wanted to try a metallic effect on text — that was the point of today's exercise.

This is the tutorial I was using: https://youtu.be/pdunTh_oyEA?si=Km2HC4BL0VbYxFZa&t=863

In essence:

1. Inner bevel, with a profile set as a slant from lower left to upper right corner. (That makes the letters stand up in the middle.)
2. Grayscale gradient (shifted a bit to blue)
3. Add the 3D effect, with specular cranked up to 100% and shininess down to 60%

I also added a couple of 3-point stars as extra shine, but I'm not sure how successful they were.

Meh. The metallic effect is fine, but the letters look like they're floating in space. I think I needed to add some shadowing behind them or something. I'm also not sold on my font choice for the author name, but the other things I tried looked worse, so... Learning is definitely still in progress. I need to dig up a couple comp titles to see what the professionals do.

I still need to work out the guidelines. The way I have things set up now, it wants to snap things to the center of a rectangle that includes the bleed, so it's off by a bit.

Other things I figured out today:

• The magnet icon on the top toolbar turns snap to grid on/off.
• If you create the text with the text art icon instead of the text frame icon, you can resize the bounding box and the text will resize. (This is been bugging me for a while because it seemed like sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. This is why.)
• If you have effects set up on some text and you want to copy that style, select the object, copy, and then select the other text object and Edit->Paste FX.

My biggest complaint about the Affinity UI is that you have to know where things are in order to use them. The right click menu doesn't offer the same choices.

Font used is Germania One.

Safety Measures (Military SF)

Day 15 of Thingadailies:

Meh. I was feeling very uninspired tonight. Part of the problem was the titles on my list, most of which are hard to put into genres or are so long that it's hard to get it all on the image. I ended up chopping off a word on this title and going with that. Cheating? Maybe.

In my defense, here are the remaining titles of the list I was given (compliments of Sierra):

• The Potato Peasants
• The Seven Roses of Shepherd Island
• An Affair to Forget
• Bicycle Touring (and Other Activities Unsuitable for Ducks)
• Latticework Larceny
• The Case of the Wrong Backpack 
• The Case of the Missing Tabletop 
• The Trespassing Photographer's Mistake 
• Bobcat, Lynx, and Mountain
• Sarah, Megan, and Five Reasons to Skip Homecoming
• Barbed Wire Butcherbird 
• Cellophane Safety Measures 
• The Underside of my Mother's Kitchen Table 
• Don't Talk About Me Behind my Back Right in Front of my Face
• Dash the Fire Out
• This Scimitar That Won Three Fields

I may need to come up with another list.

In the Very Likeness (Fantasy)

Day 14 of Thingadailies:

I don't know if I would leave the background white like this, but I was playing around with the font ("Annie Use Your Telescope") and I like how it looks. Not really sure the genre is nailed down as much as it should be, but I do like the cover.

Hm. The more I look at this, I don't think the title font matches the author name font. I'd probably change that if I went back in the file. But for a first draft, it's not bad.

Giving Sisyphus a Break (SF)

Day 13 of Thingadailies:

Honestly, I'm really tired tonight and I have a bunch of stuff to do, so... This one is pretty low effort.

On the other hand, it matches the vibe set with yesterday's Prometheus Unbound. (And this title is hard to take seriously :) )

I'd use these covers for a release.

Prometheus Unbound (SF)

Day 12 of Thingadailies:

I figure if I can create a cover while listening to a podcast, I must be leveling up in my Affinity Publisher usage.

I struggled a bit to get the text to show up over a changing background (which isn't as easy as you'd think it would be). I finally went with an outer shadow and it more or less works.

Is this cover sorta boring? Well, yeah. But it conveys the genre and that's really what matters, so...

Even the House Loses Sometimes (Mystery/Thriller)

Day 11 of Thingadailies:

Having a list of titles to choose from is helpful because it forces me to figure out how to make things work.

Today, I was going to mess with spine width or maybe warping text, but instead I played around with font sizes because this title is so long. My first attempt had the title font all the same size, and it looked really boring. I think this is visually more interesting.

(Bebas Neue is rapidly becoming my go-to font.)

Mint Tea & Midnights (Romance)

Day 10 of Thingadailies:

After two spectacular failures on the romance front, I decided to give it one last try. My image choice made it a whole lot easier this time. (Having said that, I'm not sure if this cover would get past the guidelines for advertising on Facebook, so it might be a failure in a different way.)

Today I started with the file from two days ago and left the master pages in. That did indeed solve my problem with weird borders showing up when I exported the jpeg. Maybe it was the master pages, but maybe it was something else I changed yesterday. Who knows?

I added back cover copy today and it's not great, but I've read worse. I do like the first sentence anyhow, so at least that's something.

Tomorrow I need to figure out how to change the spine width without messing everything up.

Pressure erupts in steam!

Angel Slattery has two Belgian shepherds, one beat-up motorcycle, and no time for the irritatingly handsome man next door. Black coffee fuels her days and sculpting metal burns her nights. Tending the yard isn’t a priority.

Damien Glass needs the peace and quiet of gardening to banish the writer’s block stalling the conclusion of his bestselling fantasy series, not a noisy neighbor hammering steel all night long — no matter how hot she is.

But the mint invading his plot thwarts Damien’s plans. Now he must deal with the woman next door even if every meeting leads to an argument, and friction leads to heat…

These Giddy Wandering Stars (Science Fiction)

Day 9 of Holidailies:

Today's title has kind of a retro SF feel to it, so I rolled with it. Initially, I was going to put the title vertically along the left side of the cover, but I think that only really works with short, one-word titles.

I also messed around with the spine and back cover. I kept getting it into a state where I couldn't edit the back cover copy — saving and restarting seemed to clear it, but I'm not entirely sure that was a bug and not just user error.

One of the things I've been trying to do is simplify the layers, since a bunch of crud got imported. Looking online, I decided I didn't need master pages, but I think I messed something up because exporting the front cover as a jpg includes a gray border that shouldn't be there. (I clipped it off, but that's not a permanent solution.) I'll revert to the previous file tomorrow and see if I can fix that.

Overall... This looks a bit YA (because of the image), but it looks reasonably professional for the amount of time spent.

And the paperback spread:

(Title font is Sui Generis.)

Hot Chocolate & Heartache (Romance?)

Day 8 of Thingadailies:

Compared to the abject failure that was Apple Cider & Spice this is a smashing success of a romance cover, insofar as this one doesn't appear to be set in a sexless 1950s ski lodge. But I finally decided I couldn't get the text to be visible unless I started messing around with the image, and that wasn't the point of this exercise. So it remains flawed and fairly illegible.

Also, I'm not sure it really signals "romance" as much as "burn down the world", which... I mean, okay, valid, but not quite what I was going for.

Once again, it's a good thing I don't write romance.

(There's one more romance title on the list, so I'll get a third chance.)

The Mullion Window Murder (Mystery/Thriller)

Day 7 of Thingadailies:

I finally found the hidden panel with all the text effects. For some reason they renamed it to "QUICK FX". Whoever is designing their GUI needs to lay off the alcohol — none of the other windows are in all caps. It was a weird renaming decision.

Anyhow, now that I have it, nobody can stop me!

I probably would have gone with a picture of a creepy house (that being standard for the genre), but I couldn't find one with mullion windows. (Yes, I had to look up what they were.) So I went with shattered glass instead. I'm not sure it really works, but I'm mostly okay with it.

Half Moon, Quarter Moon, Dark (Horror)

Day 6 of Thingadailies:

This cover... There were some challenges, starting with the length of the title. (Again, fake title provided by Sierra.) I don't write horror. I don't read horror. But I think this looks almost professional enough to be a real cover. Most of that's because of the picture, which is truly creepy. But some of that is thanks to the font (Boycott).

Apple Cider & Spice (Romance)

Day 5 of Thingadailies:

Today I had many arguments with Affinity as I tried to change the background of the spine. In some ways, Affinity is like Adobe in their user interface design — they like to hide all the relevant information in a window that isn't in the UI until you hunt it down and make it appear. I find this frustrating, but I find using Adobe frustrating as well. Might as well be frustrated for a one time cost instead of paying $22/month for it.

Anyhow, this is reading "sweet romance" because of the picture, which might be at odds with the title. Do I care? No, because the book is imaginary. If I had to market it, things might be different.

The typography is still all wrong, but that has nothing to do with Affinity and everything to do with me.

A Court of Artichoke & Rue (Fantasy)

Day 4 of Thingadailies:

This ended up as a muddy mess. So... not great. I couldn't figure out how to add embossing or any of those types of things to text, so I'll have to search on that at some other time. Not that embossed text would have saved this, but it might have helped.

We'll just have to agree that it's a good thing I don't write in this genre or I'd be paying someone else to make my covers...

However, I did figure out how to just export part of the paperback spread, so at least I learned something.

(Font is Freebooter Script.)

Strike Slip (Thriller)

Day 3 of Thingadailies:

Ah yes, the daily question of "how little work can I do on this and still make progress?"

Today I figured out how to clip images correctly. It took about ten seconds, because I'd noticed the "picture frame" icon the day before. But I'm still counting this as progress.

(I'm having fun writing taglines for these imaginary books.)

At some point I'll have to figure out how to set up full paperback wraps in Affinity. Maybe tomorrow...

Fracture Planes (Thriller)

Day 2 of Thingadailies:

One of the great things about having writer friends looking for any excuse to procrastinate is that you can easily outsource your fake book titles. (Thank you, Sierra!)

I'm still finding my way in Affinity Publisher, so I decided to go with something quick tonight — a thriller. There's a bunch of stuff that's not quite right — the color palette, the tagline font, and the picture itself — but I think it's not bad for something thrown together in thirty minutes.

This uses the Bebas Neueu font, which is free to use commercially under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

I still need to figure out bounding boxes for the images, though. I could resize the image to make it fit the area, but it wasn't clipping it to the rectangle like I wanted. But that's something to worry about another day.

Thingadailies 2025 - Book Covers!

It's February, which means it's time for Thingadailies, the month-long challenge to create a new thing every day. This year, I've decided to use the challenge to learn Affinity Publishing.

Background: I create my covers using Adobe InDesign, which is pretty standard for the industry. But Adobe sucks and you can only use InDesign with a subscription, so I'm paying $300 every year for a program I use maybe 30 minutes every month or two. (Insert rant about subscription software here. I hate it with the heat of a thousand suns.)

Meanwhile, the Affinity suite is reasonably priced and only requires one payment.

For most of the month, I'll be creating new covers for fake books.

Things I know will be an issue going in:

1. Fonts. The one good thing about using InDesign is that Adobe has a ton of fonts licensed for commercial use. I'll either have to license those on my own or switch them.

That's a short list. So let's start by converting an existing InDesign cover to Affinity Publishing.

For reference, here is the paperback spread as it currently exists in InDesign. (Ignore the fact that the spine and back cover have all the info for the previous book in the series. I haven't updated them yet.)

First hurdle — Affinity Publisher doesn't open InDesign's indd files.

I have to open the file in InDesign and export in idml format. Not a big deal, but it means I can't drop my Adobe subscription until I go back and export everything.

Anyhow, I exported the cover in the right format and Affinity Publisher was able to open it.

Not bad, though there are a few obvious problems, mostly to do with replacement fonts not fitting in their boxes. Also, for some reason it decided to hide the back cover text, though I was able to get it to show up again later.

Let's fix the fonts

The original file is using "Collector Comic" for the title font. I found a font that is free for commercial use called Komika that has a similar feel. (I'm not wild about what it's doing with the T, but I'll ignore that for now.)

So now the cover looks like this:

vs the original:

It may not be obvious here, but the colors are slightly different. The only difference I can find in the metadata is that the original has the ColorSync profile set to "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" and the new one has "Generic RGB Profile".

That might not matter much because it has to get converted to the CMYK colorspace for printing anyhow, but it bugs me a little.

Updated problem list

1. Fonts (This will be an ongoing thing)
2. Colors aren't as vibrant

That's enough for day 1.