Design & presentation

This is a huge topic and I’m barely scratching a surface with these article and videos, but below you’ll find guides to using media on Substack, creating paperbacks and designing covers.

A quick and easy way to format your ebook and paperback files

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June 23, 2025
A quick and easy way to format your ebook and paperback files

Sometimes you want a tool that is simple, fast and does the job without unnecessary frills. That’s what I needed this week, to prep an ebook for use in upcoming BookFunnel promotions.

Substack for Beginners

How to add images, videos and audio to your newsletter

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March 10, 2025
How to add images, videos and audio to your newsletter

I know, I know. This does not sound like the most exciting video I’ve ever made.

Transforming a serial story into a book

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June 24, 2024
Transforming a serial story into a book

I’m generally a one project-at-a-time person. It’s the only way I can make progress on anything. Hence, this newsletter and my ongoing fiction serial.

Content warnings & age ratings

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January 30, 2023
Content warnings & age ratings

There’s been a lot of interesting chatter on Fiction Substack in the last week. Elle Griffin posed an interesting question:

Preparing a book for publication

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November 21, 2022
Preparing a book for publication

I wrote this post over the weekend and it was essentially an announcement that my book No Adults Allowed is available for pre-order. That didn’t quite feel right, though: it was a bit too much of a marketing piece, without any real benefit to all of you who read this newsletter.

Relinquishing control to a publisher

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August 15, 2022
Relinquishing control to a publisher

Two of my older books have been taken into Wattpad’s ‘paid stories’ programme. This marks the first time that a publisher has taken on the publishing and promotion of my work and it’s been an intriguing experience thus far.

Anatomy of a cover

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February 21, 2022
Anatomy of a cover

I’m not a designer, but in some ways I thought that might make this more useful to other indie authors - especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have massive budgets to splash on covers.