Does Bill Bryson have author photos of him throwing back pints or eating chips? No. Because that would look tacky as hell.
I think a good headshot is best. At least for me, I’d equate a very unprofessional looking author photo with unprofessional writing almost instinctively.
Actually I just looked at a bunch of my books, including Bill Bryson, and only one of them had a picture on the back cover. About half have a picture somewhere on one of the back few pages with the About the Author blurb. I can definitely lose the author photo. I was just thinking it was standard.
You need to think about the experience of your readers and how the image acts as a catalyst for that experience.
What experience will the cover provoke? It’s often the first moment of storytelling a reader has with your story.
For example, this is counterintuitive, but an object headed toward the reader signals that they are meeting something and beginning that new experience, whereas an object driving into the distance signifies this is the end of the story.
The latter is good if it’s the end of a trilogy or something, but I don’t think that’s the experience you want to evoke with your debut.
Do you plan on being a branded author who engaged with your readers? You might want to present as kind of a character in that situation. There is a huge benefit to leaning into whatever makes you authentic and will deeply engage your target readers. You’ll put off some readers, but you’ll more deeply engage the people who are genuinely into what you’re about. That’s going to be increasingly important as more and more content will become standardized by AI and it will be the personal touch that distinguishes one person’s content from something you could get anywhere else.
I did this for a living for fifteen or so years and had numerous authors win awards and hit bestseller lists. But it was mostly in other genres, and I only occasionally made graphic design suggestions, and I could go on lol, so I am only saying this for what it’s worth. No one knows what will work for sure. I am just offering my insight and experience for whatever it is worth 
This is looking good!
Thanks, this is really giving me a lot to think about.
Ok guys, we’re getting close to the finish line. I have a poll question for anyone who wants to participate.
Basically I’m trying to decide between present tense and past tense for the opening of the book (the rest of the book is in past tense).
Here’s present tense:
And here’s past tense:
Which sounds best?
0 voters
No pluperfect option?
No but I do make a joke about learning the Spanish conjugation for pluperfect subjunctive.
So this guy from Iowa flies into Boston for a business conference. This guy really loves seafood so he’s super excited. He gets off the plane and hails a cab and he asks the driver “Where can I get scrod?” The cabbie says “Sir, that’s an excellent use of the pluperfect subjunctive case.”
If presented as a brief cold open Prologue, present tense. Readers have been trained to understand the storytelling language of shifting from present tense prologue to past tense body chapters.
If presented as the same chapter, use the same tense.
Grunching. Wrote and self-published two books over a decade ago. Have made several unsuccessful attempts since then to complete book #3. Currently sitting on a completed first draft of a novel. It’s been three years and still not through with the second draft.
Completing your book is a hell of an accomplishment. Hope it does well.
Only thing I can add that may be useful is that I sell far more copies of audio books than paper or digital, so if your paper/digital book sells at all, it’ll probably be well worth investing in producing an audio version.
Yeah I want to do an audio book. Do you have any idea how much it might cost for a 143k word book?
Don’t know if you’re familiar with the ACX platform but that’s where I went to get my audio books produced. There you can post a job with your book’s details and narrators will apply for it and quote you their price.
My books were about 50,000 words in length and they cost under $500 each to produce, though you tend to get what you pay for.
I plan to narrate it myself. I really like audiobooks where the author reads their own book.
If you have confidence in your own voice/narration skills and are ready to take on that workload, then by all means go for it. For me those factors were negative, and I don’t regret hiring pros to do it for me.
I used to do standup and did ok. I think I can pull it off.
Is it really that cheap to produce if I narrate it myself? Don’t I need a professional studio?
Equipment is indeed big factor. You need to have quality production equipment or it’ll sound like crap and listeners won’t be happy with the finished product.
If you’re doing it yourself then equipment + time will be your main costs. Then probably just go on Upwork (or maybe the ACX platform) and hire someone to edit it into a publishable format.
So I imagine it’s going to cost you about the same either way, maybe even more going the DIY route if you factor in your time.
Yeah I don’t want to DIY. I just want to narrate it.
You need a good microphone, a relatively sound proof room, and a lot of time.
A good microphone is not expensive but can be if you want something excellent.
You can make a sound proof room with empty cardboard egg crate cartons lined against the wall.
You will need a lot of time to record and edit. Unless abridged, you are looking at 20+ hours of finished audio. It really depends on whether you get it in one take each time, but most people are going to read a lot of sentences and sections several times on record and then go back to get the best takes. This means you will have a finished cut of 20+ hours but may be editing that from 100+ hours.
That is one of the only reasons you may want a producer or audio editor where all you need to do is send them the audio files and tell them what you want.
But otherwise it just takes time to learn audio editing software, then to take the time to edit all of the audio into a performance cut for readers. Which again is a lot of time but can be done solo and is by comparison far less time than it took you to write the book 
sitting here thinking about it, if i wrote a book (over several years) it’d be my baby and i would have been hearing my own voice in my head narrating the entire time, so either i’d need to do it or i’d be able to instantly reject like 95% of narrators based on hearing 3 seconds of their voice…
