This is an update house keeping post, it does however hold some information that may be useful for new writers along the way.

As part of the project ‘add a J. to my name’ I have to change the internals and covers of all my books in every format, to add the new pen name, Mark J. Hayes for the reasons I mentioned a couple of blogs ago. This has escalated as I am effectively updating and reinvigouration11 years worth of publishing.

Yes, before anyone points this out, I could have just added the J’s quickly and done all the covers the way I have been doing covers for the last 11 years. But as I had to revisit every file and ever cover in every format, it seemed like it would be worth while bringing everything up to date.

In theory at least, every time I publish something new I have to go back through everything else and change the ‘Also by this author’ pages for one thing, but the simple fact is that hardly ever happens because its is such a big task. About the author pages change too, and contact details, for example most of my books still had my old twitter address listed (I left twitter a while ago, because, well, twitter…)

So every book is now getting this About the Author page…

Which as you can see is entirely serious…

And these ‘By the Same Author’ pages

You might notice the future proofing of those *forthcoming titles, which are there so I don’t need to go through every book again for a fair while. I know what is in my WIP file and how long it will all take to write…

There are other things too. I used to publish as Saltholme publishing for one, but I changed the name of my personal imprint / publishing house to Steampowered Books for reasons of branding, ie I wished to have some… But I had not changed all the books yet.

There was also covers. I design my own with Canva as I have since the first book. The way I used to do paperback covers was with the KDP cover making tool, put the front cover art form the ebook cover in and use plain back overs and insert the text. This is simple, straight forward and easy to manage and makes perfectly okay covers. the main reason being that the free version of canva allows you to make ebook covers but bespoke wrap covers need bespoke sizes and the paid version. And ever wrap is a bespoke size due to the variation in spine…

There are a couple of issues with that way of doing covers, firstly a full wrap looks better as a rule, but more importantly if you want to take your print files to a local printer to get a small print run done of 20 or some books, which would eb cheaper than Amazon and generally better quality, you need the full wrap.

I have a paid canva account these days because I use it a lot more than once a year, so as part of the reinvigoration process and ‘adding the J, I am making wrap covers for my hardbacks and paperbacks. This is not all that complicated you just need to download the template generated for each book by size and page count, then make a bespoke template in canva and get creative…

So here are some examples

That is not all, because of course its not. I am redoing blurbs on books and amazon itself , 11 years hold a lot of lessons about what works and what doesn’t. There is the odd tweak of the books themselves if I have typos listed to remove. And all the kindle books are getting bonus content because it costs me nothing to add the first chapter of the next book in the series, or a standalone to the kindle file. Indeed in terms of page reads on Kindle unlimited etc, it is a positive bonus.

I am also making the hardbacks all larger font, and other tweaks. In essence there is a lot but then revamping your way through 11 years of publishing is going to do that to you. I am killing one small novella along the way just because it is already incorporated in an another anthology. But otherwise I am just working through them all, and once that’s done I have to update everything here as well…

So anyway… My name is Mark ‘J’ Hayes and I am a writer. I will eventually get back to writing once all the other books are sorted out…