Nick Thacker will provide a deep dive into what's new with BookCovers.com as the premier place for authors to work with artists to find their new cover art!
Eleven months Draft2Digital announced the acquisition of SelfPubBookCovers.com (SPBC), a decade-old pioneering marketplace for premade book covers. We've been hard at work rebuilding a site that's committed to helping authors find the perfect cover, and helping professional cover designers build their businesses. Today our own Nick Thacker will provide a deep dive into what's new and provide a preview of what's to come!
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Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:01]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs, and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from d two d and their industry influencing guests. You're listening to Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:28]:
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Self Publishing Insiders. I am Jim Azevedo. I lead corporate communications and marketing here at Draft2Digital. And today, it's my pleasure to bring you my friend, my colleague, Nick Thacker in the studio with us today. Hello, Nick.
Nick Thacker [00:00:45]:
How's it going, everyone? Good to be here. Jim, thanks for having me.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:49]:
Well, of course. Hey. We we had to have you. So this is kind of a special edition episode here, Nick. The reason we're here, everybody, is because you may you may all recall, it was just 11 months ago that we announced the acquisition of self published book covers. And along with that acquisition, we also announced that Nick Thacker here would become the vice president of an entirely new division at Draft2Digital called author success, and self published book covers was going to fall in to the author success division run by Nick here. So, Nick, to kinda kick off this conversation, can we remind our audience here why, you know, we saw this opportunity, for self published book covers, like, how it came about in the first place and why. Like, we just we jumped on it because let's let's face it.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:49]:
The company had just acquired Smashwords, and we're, you know, kinda integrating those 2 companies. Hey. Here's another acquisition opportunity. We didn't hesitate. Why? What's the opportunity?
Nick Thacker [00:02:02]:
It's an interesting, I'll try to keep it concise, but Smashwords wasn't the first company to be acquired by Draft2Digital. It turns out that little honor or award goes to a company that I started, with a good friend, called author email, and that was acquired in 2020. I came on board in 2020 and was essentially just running author email. It was it was I was obviously on the team. I was doing draft digital stuff, going to conferences.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:31]:
Yep.
Nick Thacker [00:02:32]:
But I was running author email. And then we, we sort of put some of the the developmental plans for author email on on the back burner because of the Smashwords acquisition. It it required a much more attention. It's a bigger deal.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:45]:
About that.
Nick Thacker [00:02:48]:
Oh, that's okay. It's not your fault. I hold you personally responsible. No. It was, just you know, there's more people. There's more authors involved. It was one of those things where you did more TLC than author email. Because, you know, I author email was so well built that it didn't have any problems.
Nick Thacker [00:03:02]:
No. Not at all. Like I said, it's just because the the sheer amount of people using the platform required our developmental effort, and that continued until it's still going on. I mean, migrations are still happening and all that. But, somewhere about 11, I guess, 12 months ago now, maybe a little bit before that, I was brought into a meeting. Always a scary thing when the CEO and the and the CTO give call a meeting with you. And I was like, uh-oh. What's going on? They said, hey.
Nick Thacker [00:03:27]:
This is all this is we think it's gonna be good, but we want you to run this new initiative. If you're interested, we'll call it author success. Author email would be part of it. But we also have this opportunity to to to get hold of a company called self pub book covers.com. We think you'd be a great person to, to run it and and, you know, get it off the ground and all that. The way it started was a conversation between those 2 people, Toby and Chris, a few others, that decided they wanted to that we, as a company, wanted to have a link on the upload process. So if you upload a book to Draft2Digital, it asks you if you have a cover. And if you do, you upload your cover.
Nick Thacker [00:04:07]:
We wanted an answer for what if you don't have a cover? Well, who do we link to? Should we let let's go find a partner that we can link to, that we can recommend, that that offers covers in an affordable, ethical way, all that stuff. And, of course, that became, let's buy a whole company. Let's let's make the whole thing. Let's, you know, make pre made book covers our our new thing, which wasn't originally their intent, but it it it quickly became evident that we have an opportunity we probably shouldn't say no to in in being able to acquire this company. The founders of the company are just amazing people. Rob is an amazing guy. He really is just ready to retire, ready to be done. And so, you know, he wanted it to go to good hands.
Nick Thacker [00:04:43]:
So here we are. A year later, we've acquired self pub book covers.com, and we've got lots of crazy things to announce, which we'll talk about. But that's that's kind of the full story. That's how we ended up with self pub book covers. It was started as an idea for a link, and now it's a whole company that we're that we're running and rebuilding rebuilding.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:02]:
Yeah. And I I totally agree. Like, I had met Rob years ago. You know, we would have when when I was working for Smashwords, Smashwords would have a table at, like, say, our own Master of America conference. And then I could see Rob coming down the hallway with this table and all of his, his papers and everything. And we just struck up a conversation, and that happened every single year. And he was just, he and Shoshana were just the nicest people, and their heart was in the right place. And they kinda pioneered this pre made book cover marketplace.
Nick Thacker [00:05:35]:
They did. Actually, what's kinda funny about this is I I told Chris and Toby, shortly after this first call, when I said, yeah. I'll do it. He said, this is kind of serendipitous, in in a lot of ways, but I started a company called readycovers.com way before Draft2Digital was but a twinkle in my eye. There was a marketplace
Jim Azevedo [00:05:55]:
I I remember hearing this. I just
Nick Thacker [00:05:57]:
Yeah. It it never got off the ground. I got scared away. There were some legal reasons. There was nothing we weren't doing anything illegal, but I was worried about, you know, getting sued or not using stock photos the right way. And I shouldn't have been, but I I I never got off the ground. But the main I I would say competitor, I wasn't looking at it like, you know, hostility, but the main Wait.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:17]:
Wait. Wait. Did the cousins probably know that before?
Nick Thacker [00:06:20]:
They did not know that before? No. They had no idea.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:24]:
How funny.
Nick Thacker [00:06:25]:
Like I said, serendipitous. Right? I I just thought, you know, this is kinda funny. I've I've sort of done this already, which will become more and more of a reason as as we talk today. You'll you'll hear a little bit more why that was really important because we turned it turns out we couldn't just acquire this company and, you know, this website and then keep it going. Sure. It was it was built very well, but it was built a long time ago. And, the the previous dev team is no longer in the picture. So Rob was essentially, you know, trying to hire a new dev firm that wasn't up to speed.
Nick Thacker [00:06:58]:
You know, Rob's not a dev. Shoshana's gone. And it was just one of those things where, gosh, you know, that we don't know what we need to do, but we can't keep the same platform because it's not secure. Every day, it's it's kind of feels like it's hacked together by duct tape. It's not. It was just built so long ago that it's it was falling apart. And so
Jim Azevedo [00:07:17]:
So let me let me let me stop you there. Yeah. Because I wanna just kind of pause on that for a second because once the company was acquired and you agreed to take you know, to lead author solutions and to kinda take on this new company that we're that we acquired. So once you had that on your plate, like, how did you decide, like, here are the things that we need to tackle, and here are the priorities for the different parts of this business that we'd need to tackle because it's not just a matter of, you know, clicking a few buttons. Like, you had to kinda break some things down and rebuild them from scratch from what I understand. Is that true?
Nick Thacker [00:07:57]:
No. That is
Jim Azevedo [00:07:58]:
Tell me, Nick. Like, let us know how you prioritize each of these things and what that means for, the authors and cover designers.
Nick Thacker [00:08:07]:
Yeah. In the dev world, it's the the triage methodology, which is what breaks first and what's the most impactful thing that, you know, that just broke. Let's fix that. And it it very quickly became evident to me that while, yes, there were some, security issues, you know, no one was trying to hack the site or anything like that, but there were some holes. There were some security holes that we wanted to patch. Then that led to realizing it was built on a content management system called Joomla, by the way. Some of you guys may have heard of. It's like think of WordPress, but it's older, and and it is still being developed, but the the platform that this website exists on can't be updated because the core files were so affected and so changed by the devs that, the original programmers who built it out, that I can't go in and update Joomla to the latest version.
Nick Thacker [00:08:53]:
So it's very insecure, and there's a lot of other issues with it, and I can't install plug ins. The biggest issue though, Jim, was, I very quickly realized that this is a customer support nightmare. And, again, nothing that that any of the previous owners did wrong. It was just all email based, because of the necessity of of working back and forth with authors 13, 14 years ago. Yeah. It was a smaller company then, and now it's not. It it wasn't so small. And so I took it over and was given an Outlook account with everything that happens in the company, coming back and forth.
Nick Thacker [00:09:27]:
So if you're an artist who wants a book cover, you can or so if you're an author who wants a book cover, you can go find your cover, download it. That's fine. But then if you want to have a back cover or spine made up, you know, full wrap for print, you're sending an email to us. And then we're sending you an invoice via email, and then you're paying that and making sure that you clarify what the invoice is for, what you're paying for so that I can track it. And then I go find the the artist who designed it and send them an email, and they send an email back that says, yeah. We can do the full wrap. And then I send an email paying them a deposit, and then they send me an email with the low res version. And then I send that to the author, and the author says yes or no.
Nick Thacker [00:10:05]:
We'll make changes. And that it it goes back and forth probably 15
Jim Azevedo [00:10:08]:
So that's just a full time job times, like, you know, the thousands of authors and and and artists that you've got.
Nick Thacker [00:10:17]:
Yeah. So 2 covers, 2 back cover spines, 3, 4 a day, whatever, you know, on average we were doing. Couldn't handle it personally. Now Rob is an exceptionally gifted individual who was just, you know, typing emails all day. And, of course, he had, you know, templates and things like that that I got a hold of, but that's just not how my brain works. And so I'm like, I can't do this. So it was, you know, I was, I talked to Tara, who's our customer support, maestro over here. And she got me hooked up with Freshdesk, which is the ticket system we use internally at Draft2Digital.
Nick Thacker [00:10:46]:
That's made things a lot easier, but still is a very back and forth communication process. Okay.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:53]:
And you
Nick Thacker [00:10:53]:
know this about me, Jim. You're a communications guy. I am not. That is not my bread and butter. It's not my my gift, or skill set. And so and I don't enjoy doing it. Right? I communicate when I have to. That's no.
Nick Thacker [00:11:06]:
I'm just kidding. But, this was very difficult for me. And I also didn't wanna, you know, just turn this over to our customer support team who is very good, because I knew that we were gonna need to upgrade the system. So it was like this
Jim Azevedo [00:11:19]:
huge giant
Nick Thacker [00:11:20]:
problem. Yeah. Right. It just became all these different problems together, and I pitched to Toby and Chris. I said, listen. What I think needs to happen is we need to rebuild this website from the ground up. I can get us 98% there on WordPress. I can build it out with some plugins.
Nick Thacker [00:11:34]:
I've done this in the past. The the 10% that I can't do, we've got a team for, or we, you know, we can go find a developer, which is ended up ended up what we did. So I've got a developer working for me on this final this final stretch. But that's what we decided to do. So it's been a it's been a journey, an 11 month long journey.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:52]:
Yeah. And, well, we should probably talk about what it's called now. So self pub
Nick Thacker [00:11:57]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:57]:
Self pub book covers is now called book covers.com.
Nick Thacker [00:12:03]:
Bookcovers.com. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:05]:
Alright. I just I just I just saw your thunder. So and There we go. Yeah. Bookcovers.com. Everybody. So we have to tell people, though, that the that's so bookcovers.com is not fully live yet. Correct?
Nick Thacker [00:12:21]:
Right. Right.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:22]:
So they you you can go to the site. You can check it out. You can get a sense of what their refresh, their rebrand, their relaunch will look like. But but if an but if an artist or an author is is new to book covers, the best if they wanna set up an account, they should go to softpubbookcovers.com first. Correct?
Nick Thacker [00:12:43]:
Yeah. The old the existing old site. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:12:47]:
Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Nick Thacker [00:12:48]:
So the way we're saying it is, this is like a phase one. So if the site's live, bookcovers.com works. Go ahead and go there. Click around. It's gonna give us a good stress test anyway. You know, we have millions of people clicking around on there. You'll see some covers. Those are, like, placeholders.
Nick Thacker [00:13:02]:
Those are for sale on the old site. You can set up an account on the old site. What you can do on the new site is see what it's gonna look like, see how it's gonna feel. You'll see the launch page being advertised on the top of the bar. Go see that. That's our timeline when we're expecting to launch what we'll call phase 2 or the full launch where you can go make accounts if you're an author or an artist. Go sign up for the mailing list too because we'll let you know there's on that launch page, if you scroll down a bit, there's some sections for, hey. I just wanna be told what's going on.
Nick Thacker [00:13:31]:
Sign up, like a general mailbox, and then there's the author and and artist, mailing list. And so go sign up for those because we will tell you, hey. We're live. You can go upload your covers now, all that. But if you just can't wait to get started, you can go to the old site and still make an account, upload your covers. We have a vetting process. It will take a few days, but they'll go live. And then your covers will be migrated over to our new system when we are live on bookcovers.com.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:57]:
Nice. Yeah. You you mentioned, stress testing. And, like, you and maybe NASA are the only, you know, organizations that I know who actually actually have a a public countdown timer for deadlines for what's upcoming here. I mean, I can't imagine telling the world, like, hey. Like, I've got this deadline, and it's coming in 2 weeks, it says. How does that feel? But you have a nice asterisk there just in case, you know, the unknowns kinda pop up. Yeah.
Nick Thacker [00:14:29]:
I'm probably gonna be going on and changing that asterisk to, you know, hey. Maybe about 2 weeks, maybe 3, maybe 4. The but the goal is, you know, this is sort of, you and I actually were talking about them. It's sort of doing this so that it it motivates us to finish and to get this done in a certain Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? So, like, we, you know, we had the, article that went live in Indie Author Magazine, good friends of ours, getting ready for the self published live show in in, London. Anyway Yeah. Things like that or Yeah. You know, we wanted to announce it because it's good marketing.
Nick Thacker [00:14:59]:
It's good promotion opportunities for us. But at the same time, it also gets us, you know, motivated to get this thing fully launched. So that's part of the reason we did that. It is loose. It's an it's a launch calendar that that basically says, yeah. We're thinking about launching this rocket. It's mostly built. You know, come back in a couple weekends, and we'll, you know, go to Houston, and and you'll see it launch or not.
Nick Thacker [00:15:19]:
We'll let you know when we're gonna launch it for sure.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:22]:
Right. And one of the reasons why we're talking about it before it's fully, you know, ready for prime time, before it's fully launched and available for new accounts is because a lot of work has gone into this, for both the artist side and the author side. And the artists, you know, they are a constituent of Draft2Digital now, and, we want to make it easier for our artists to build their businesses like we do for authors to build their businesses as well. So Yeah. Let's talk about that angle because we're here to get authors and artists excited about what's going on here. Can you talk about some of the changes that went into this refresh, this rebuild, bookcarvers.com specifically for professional cover designers and what that means for them.
Nick Thacker [00:16:10]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. No. And that's really crucial to to, you know, kind of harp on that because we've always been a company that's been authors first, authors first, authors first. And that hasn't changed, but we're now adding this this cohort. Like I said, this is a marketplace. So we're not just supporting authors here and offering premade book covers.
Nick Thacker [00:16:28]:
We're offering the ability for artists to go on and design book covers and then sell them from their own storefront on our website. So in the past, the previous website, the the one that's currently self pub book covers dot com, the old one, we'll call it. Yeah. You can do that. You can upload your your covers as an artist, and you can offer them for sale. And you can click through and see covers that that designer has made. On the new site, I've been building an entire storefront capability. So you as an artist can go and set up your storefront with a banner, a graphic.
Nick Thacker [00:17:00]:
You'll be able to run promotions on your own covers. So if you wanna offer a sale for for a week, you'll be able to, put your store on hold if you go on vacation. Use the vacation mode, and then you'll be able to do advertisements on the site. So if you wanna advertise your cover on our home page, for example, you'll be able to do that, right from your own designer author dashboard or artist dashboard. One of the things that I'm building that, Jim just had to have before we launched was an affiliate program as well. So we're we're we're getting that set up. No. I'm just giving you all my hard time, but, you know, we'd always want we always love the idea to say, hey.
Nick Thacker [00:17:35]:
What what else can we do that would help this? Well, an affiliate program is a great way for authors or artists to earn a little bit extra cash promoting the service, promoting the marketplace, or promoting that specific designer. So, anyway, it's it's just a really, really great opportunity for any artist or any author who thinks they're an artist or wants to become an artist, to go put the shingle out and and have their own storefront on a platform that will run, will manage, will maintain. It just also makes everything easier. As an artist, like I said previously, if I got a an order from an author who wants a full wrap of a cover that that artist has designed, I have to email that author that artist, excuse me, and then ask them if they're available, and then give them a deposit. And then they say, yeah. Here's the low res, and then the author, let's say, likes it, then I write them back and get the high res version that's print ready. All of that is automated now. So the artist will get an email if the author decides to purchase that, at checkout.
Nick Thacker [00:18:26]:
They can just check a box and that add adds the full wrap to the order. They get the email, the artist could just design it and send it back. Or the author can buy it at any time later on, and same thing, the artist gets an email. And so we're just building in ways to make that communication process a lot more smooth. If an artist doesn't respond within a certain amount of days, we have an in house designer, who will do it, and and they can send it off to the author. So the author doesn't have to wait around. But that way, the artist still gets paid if they've if they got the time and they can do that full wrap cover, and there's just everything's automated. Payments, good is a good example as well.
Nick Thacker [00:18:59]:
All that I'm gonna
Jim Azevedo [00:19:00]:
ask you about that.
Nick Thacker [00:19:00]:
Used to be automated on the existing system, but it's not anymore. It just sort of broke. And so I'm manually sending PayPal payments, and I'm I'm I hate to say it, but sometimes relying on the artist to tell me that they haven't been paid for a cover. And that's not okay. And so the new system totally changes that. Everything is automated. You get to choose when you wanna get paid. I don't know if we'll keep that feature alive, but you can essentially set a date for when you wanna get paid.
Nick Thacker [00:19:23]:
It'll send an automatic Stripe or pay PayPal, excuse me, payout. But it's all automated. It's just so much smoother than everything else, that that has a system fast. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:34]:
Okay. What's what, can you tell me about any processes that are different for the authors themselves? Like, what are they what maybe what they used to with self book covers that's a little bit different now with book covers.com?
Nick Thacker [00:19:49]:
That's a great question too. The the kind of the unique selling proposition proposition in business speak, we say the USP, right, of the existing website has always been not just the marketplace, but the ability for the author to go in, purchase a cover design, or or even browse and find a cover design they might like. And then our system will let you customize the font on there, the the the actual typography of the font, so of the text on there. So if you have an author name, book title, you can change that, you can use our fonts, and you can design using an editor. Now that system is 13 years old now, and it works, but it's not as pretty. It's not as user friendly as what we've built now. So that process is going to effectively be the same, but it's gonna be so much better and and so much more fun to go in and design your book cover. So imagine, you know, like a canvas where you click a book cover, click on customize, and you get a canvas that gives you options for just literally dragging and dropping it in pre predetermined font styles.
Nick Thacker [00:20:47]:
Your, you know
Jim Azevedo [00:20:48]:
Oh, wow.
Nick Thacker [00:20:48]:
Author name, book title. And And then you click on that, and you can type in your own author name and book title, customize it, save it. You can save it in your account. Somebody else may purchase that cover if you haven't purchased it, you know, but you can also just purchase it right there. And then it's yours forever. It's a unique cover that you helped design.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:04]:
It is unique. And if you're not I don't have to worry about, like, finding, you know, the same cover or variation of the cover where, you know, the the characters are standing this way on one cover, but they're standing this way on another cover that's exactly the same. These are all unique Yeah. One of a kind all unique. Right. Coverage that we're talking about.
Nick Thacker [00:21:21]:
Right. And so, you know, we're still using stock photos, so there's gonna be covers that are similar. Sure. But, the the whole idea here is that once you put your own fonts on there, your own title, and your own author name, that's gonna be the most unique cover. Right? There's no one else gonna use that same thing. But the best part is once you purchase that cover, you not only can you use it forever, obviously, but you can also change that text anytime you want. So if you wanted to add a subtitle down the road, if you wanted to put a series name down the road, or if you wanted to use the exact same cover graphic and just change the book title for a whole series, you could absolutely do that as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:53]:
Do you have to pay every time one of those iterations are made?
Nick Thacker [00:21:57]:
Nope. You pay one time. The only time you're paying for a modification is if we're modifying the design. If the artist has to open that file and change something on the the design. So the the text is all sense. You change it as many times as you want, download the high res, use it. You know, if you make a mistake or need to change something later, you can totally do that with the text. The modification fee, I think ours is $50.
Nick Thacker [00:22:17]:
The minimum fee is $50. So you go in and most modifications can be done with $50. So if you have a cover where you're sitting I I have one project right now where the author wants a series, exact same design, but they want it to be modified. So, like, to have a blue background instead of a green one and then a red background instead of a blue one. And then it's a 3 book series, same same design, but just different color. So $50 each time, but the purchase of the original cover, that's theirs. And they they paid whatever that cost, 69 or $79, and then they just paid $50 for the author for the artist to go in and make different iterations of it for them.
Jim Azevedo [00:22:51]:
Okay. That makes sense. Alright. We would love to make everything free, but this involves the actual time for the the designer to go in there and change their design.
Nick Thacker [00:23:00]:
Right.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:00]:
That makes sense. So but we're talking probably what? Like, thousands of covers on the site?
Nick Thacker [00:23:07]:
Over 60,000.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:08]:
Oh, is that all? Okay. So as an author, like, I'm all you know, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Like, oh my god. How am I gonna find what I'm looking for? How do we help authors browse for that perfect cover image?
Nick Thacker [00:23:25]:
That's been a problem on the existing site. Again, one of the older features of the original content management system this platform was built on, again, called Joomla, is that it didn't have a very good search functionality. And so over the years that has improved. We haven't been able to change the Joomla core because, like like I said, it can't be updated. So long story short, we've had a lot of users who don't like using this the old site because they couldn't find what they wanted. They would search for something, and they would get a couple relevant results and then a page full of, you know, off topic, or off off relevant, nonrelevant cover images. On the new site, that's that's not gonna be the case at all. Not only do we have categories, you can browse through a category.
Nick Thacker [00:24:05]:
You can see this. It's working now. There may not be covers in those categories yet because we haven't imported them all, but you can go click action adventure and find covers that the designer believes are action adventure oriented. One of the things that I'm playing with, and I'll probably start getting everyone will get the pitchforks out here, but one of the things I'm playing with is something like a small language model. I'm not gonna use the term AI because it's not artificial nor is it intelligent, and I don't wanna open that can of worms. But some sort of small language model where we can just internally only for this website, you know, feed in these covers and teach it what different things look like and so that our search can be much more refined. So you can actually search for a specific thing that the designer didn't choose as a tag or a category, but that this model sees as in the image. So for example, if there's a farmer on the book cover, but the designer uploads it, just puts it in the tag category called, let's say, western romance, and there's no tag for farmer, there would be no way right now for anybody to know that there's a farmer on that cover unless you happen to see it.
Nick Thacker [00:25:07]:
It. I envision this again, it's just an idea. We haven't done it yet. I don't know if we will. But I envision an ability for us to include some sort of functionality on the website that can see that there's a farmer. So when you search farmer, it'll show up. So that's just one of many things, but generally speaking, the search functionality, it it does work. And generally speaking, it's way better than what currently exists.
Nick Thacker [00:25:28]:
So I don't think any author's gonna come to the site and have trouble finding exactly what they need already. There's much better category, limitations here, and we're not allowing designers to upload their book and then choose, you know, 50 categories. They have to sort of organize their their idea into 3 categories or 4. You know?
Jim Azevedo [00:25:48]:
Sure. One of things I wanted to ask you too, Nick, and this isn't, like, to put you on the spot or anything. It's just that I know that the site's not fully functional yet, and sometimes, you know, there are, there are speed issues with with the site with any site. I'm actually gonna I'll bring up a comment from Jim because I know that another Jim, he's like, I can't load the page. I'm sure he's talking about bookcoverage.com. And we've seen this, but I know that this is one of the things one of the many things that you have that is on your plate to tackle as you move forward and get the site ready for day 1 launch. So, you know, Jim, we appreciate your comment.
Nick Thacker [00:26:26]:
Yeah. I'm loading the page right now. I just refreshed because my heart sank. I was like, oh, no. Is it down? Everything looks like it's up. Everything looks should be working. Yeah. We definitely are gonna make sure as we fully launch this thing.
Nick Thacker [00:26:38]:
This is, you know, stress testing. Like I said earlier, that's a very real thing that we have to do, and it's challenging to stress test with not actual users. You know, I can run some tests and things like that on a network server, but, getting real actual human beings on their own computers with their own Internet connection and their own, you know, browsers, There's no there's nothing like it for stress testing. So that's good. I'm I'm glad that, Jim told us, first of all. I'm not seeing any issues, but this is exactly what we're gonna do. We're gonna check logs. Okay.
Nick Thacker [00:27:07]:
Do we need to scale this up, down? Yeah. On that note, we built this new website on, a server that we fully full well knew we were gonna have to change either by moving it completely or upgrading or downgrading it. It was really small when we first started, and so JT, our our programmer here, working on this with me. We very quickly were like, hey. Let's upgrade a little bit. And so we just bumped it up size wise. So it's still not where it's going to be when we fully launch. So, yep, we fully expect there's gonna be little bugs here and there, things like that that we'll iron out, that we'll squash before we go live.
Nick Thacker [00:27:40]:
If anyone watching or listening, if you do find stuff like that, just shoot us an email. I've got I
Jim Azevedo [00:27:45]:
don't know. We we wanna know. We'll fix it.
Nick Thacker [00:27:48]:
Well well, yeah, we definitely wanna get that on the list if there is an actual
Jim Azevedo [00:27:52]:
issue here. And the reason I wanted to pop that up too is just, you know, in that spirit of transparency, like, hey. We know that, you know, we're working toward this, and it's just one of the many things that you're working on, Nick. Like, I keep laughing every time I say it. One of the many things that you're working on because I know that there's so much involved, And I wanna tell our audience out there too that before we went live today, you know, we're talking about when South Public Book Covers was acquired, and Nick's like, yeah. It's been a long time trying to get this signed up. I'm like, dude, it's been 11 months, man. You put in a lot of work, and it's not the only thing that you've been working on.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:27]:
Like you said, you've got author email, you know, the conferences that you attend, everything that you do on a day to day basis, and here you are restructuring this this completely different company that you're kinda molding in to draft a digital. So I just you know, I wanna give you the the kudos that you deserve for the progress that you've made. In my mind, 11 months is pretty darn quick out there. So
Nick Thacker [00:28:51]:
Well, thanks. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:52]:
Getting it this far this quickly.
Nick Thacker [00:28:55]:
You know, as I said before, this this website was was very well run before. And, yeah, there's definitely things that we needed to rebuild and and restructure. And And so it's been a massive undertaking, but it's not like we started from scratch, and it's not like we started with a just a, you know, bad management previously. It was all done so well. It was just old. And so bringing it into the modern era, has been a huge task, but it's certainly much better than the alternative of starting from absolutely nothing.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:23]:
Yeah. And when we say old, we're not talking, like, you know, 50 years ago. We're talking 10 years ago, but in Internet time
Nick Thacker [00:29:32]:
Right. That's a 1000000 years.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:35]:
Yeah. Especially in this in this day and age. Just gonna start bringing up some comments and questions here. Our own Alyssa says this sounds like prime side hustle material.
Nick Thacker [00:29:46]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It is. Yeah. We've actually had, one of our Draft2Digital staff members, has set up an account and is making some covers, so that yeah. The more, the merrier. Let's get your covers in there. If you that's the best part about this marketplace.
Nick Thacker [00:29:59]:
Right? It's it's it's not going to hurt anybody to upload a cover that doesn't get purchased right away, nor is it gonna hurt anybody to upload 5 covers that get bought tomorrow. That's the whole point of this endeavor. So it's a great side also for any author who's got some, some design shops as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:16]:
Right. I don't wanna bring up another comment from our own Lexi Green who says indie authors supporting indie authors and vice versa. I love this comment, Lexi, because, you know, Nick was joking about the affiliate program before because months months months ago, we were discussing, you know, how are we going to get in touch with the cover designers, the artists? Because we, you know, we've got a pretty good idea where the authors hang out or where the artists hang out. So then we're just talking amongst ourselves, and we're like, well, authors know cover artists. Let's talk to the to the authors to get them to, you know, talk to their author friends and get the artists to talk to their artist friends as well and spread the word out there organically to Yeah. Let them all know that this opportunity exists for them to help them build their businesses.
Nick Thacker [00:31:05]:
You know, I'm gonna answer a question that wasn't asked on this call, but I've gotten before, about that, Jim. And it's the nonexclusivity versus exclusivity as far as cover designs go. So if you as an artist wanna sign up for the website, there is no reason you couldn't also sell those covers on your own website. However, we do require you to remove them from one place or the other if they get sold. Right? So it becomes a little bit of a burden, if you're running your own cover design website, to to make sure, okay, I got a sale over here. I need to make sure I take that cover off of my website. Because, again, we can only sell it one time, and you can only sell it one time. You don't wanna sell it to 2 different authors because that's not okay.
Nick Thacker [00:31:45]:
And so what we what we've basically done is built a marketplace where we want you to think of it in terms of exclusivity where there's no you don't you don't need to be selling your covers on your own website because you're gonna have so many more eyeballs on your work over here on bookcovers.com that you're not interested in maintaining your own website and uploading it to 2 different places and all that. That's the goal. But, again, legally, we're not requiring you to only sell them through our website. So if you're a designer who's like, yeah. I'm not sure if I wanna upload all this stuff. Go ahead and do it. Just know that if you get a sale, you'll just have to make sure you take that off or say that it's sold on your own website or something like that.
Jim Azevedo [00:32:20]:
Okay. Is that all explained during the upload process to to artists? I mean, they'll
Nick Thacker [00:32:25]:
do we have
Jim Azevedo [00:32:25]:
any kind of
Nick Thacker [00:32:27]:
But it will be. Yeah. That's one of the final steps, you know, I was going through. And, what I haven't done yet, basically, it's on my list of a 1000000 things to do. But one of the things will be, we do have a walk through. So it's a very easy onboarding process. I just need to write that, write what happens up during that walk through. It's a real slick process.
Nick Thacker [00:32:44]:
You sign up. Hey. I wanna be an artist, and it says, hey. Welcome. Go through this, you know, 5 step process. It's terms and service, terms and conditions, things like that. Make sure our privacy policy, all that. And then one of those things will just be communicating.
Nick Thacker [00:32:56]:
Here's how it works. Here are the terms. Here's how you get paid. Here's when you get paid.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:00]:
Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. And I've seen the FAQs for artists and authors on the website already, and it's pretty comprehensive. It's and it's very well done and concise and very articulate. So I'm gonna bring up a comment from somebody you might know from Mark Leslie, the fave. Thanks for the comment, Mark.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:19]:
Mark says the ability to update subtitle, font style, etcetera, at at selfpubbookcovers.com is a game changer. It's come in handy for a couple of my projects. Yeah. Absolutely, Mark. Yep.
Nick Thacker [00:33:33]:
And the new one is so easy
Jim Azevedo [00:33:35]:
to use.
Nick Thacker [00:33:35]:
It's so much easier. The previous one is, you know again, I don't wanna make make it sound like I'm I'm dissing the existing site. Not at all. It was just it's it's out of date now. But it was you type in a box which you want, and then you literally, you know, click arrows to move them left and right on the cover. The new version is you just drag it around. You take the mouse, click it, drag it around, make it bigger, you know, just like you would do in in Canva, if you're familiar with that, or Photoshop if you're a designer. Same sort of idea here.
Nick Thacker [00:34:01]:
It's just very, very simple and very easy to to do.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:05]:
It sounds super intuitive. But, I wanna bring up this next question from Alyssa because I think it fits perfectly, kind of into the in our path of questions here. And Alyssa asks, can you tell us the price ranges, Nick? How much your covers usually cost from bookcovers.com? And if I can put an addendum onto that question, and how does that compare to other places where you might find a professional, where where you might find professional cover art?
Nick Thacker [00:34:34]:
Sure. Yeah. So right now, and I say right now meaning the the the last 13 years of history with the existing website, the average cover price you'll see is between $69.99. There's a there's a wide range of covers that that are 69 minimum is there's a minimum price on the existing side, which is $69. I don't know that Rob ever put a maximum range. I think he might he must have, but I don't know what it is. But the the highest price ones I've seen are about a $159 or $160. And and that that's just for the ebook, you know, just your 6 by 9 graphic, the design, and then you put your own text on there and all that.
Nick Thacker [00:35:13]:
So that's sort of your range of 69 to about 99, and then there are some that are a little more expensive because the designer put more work into them or they use more elements, whatever. We don't have any interest in changing that because in my opinion and I'm an author, you know, I've got 40 something thrillers out, and I've paid for every single book cover design. I know how much this stuff cost, and that is very affordable. That's just a steal, honestly. And and compared to other premade book cover sites, yeah, you'll see some that are between 50 and a $100 as well. So we're right in line with that. But you also have to consider there's custom covers, and those can run 4 100, $500, $600 if you're in fantasy or there's illustrations involved. They can be over $1,000 if they're, you know, super high, and really intense graphics, all that stuff.
Nick Thacker [00:35:59]:
It just take a lot of time. And so while I'm not trying to say that a premade book cover is always the same quality as a custom cover because there are incredible designers doing custom work.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:09]:
You know, you you have as an author Some of those some of those professional cover designers have. I'm sorry, Nick. Yeah. I was just gonna say some of those professional cover designers have accounts that sell public covers for their previous products as well.
Nick Thacker [00:36:20]:
Yeah. Exactly. And that's the best part. The reason we wanted to have this marketplace, you can order a custom cover on the new bookcovers.com site from one of these designers. So they may have, you know, pages and pages of premade book covers, and you get a sense that they're all being illustrated. You know, they're all designed by this great designer, and you wanna reach out as an officer. Hey. Do you do custom coverage? You can literally click a button, ask them if they wanna do a custom cover.
Nick Thacker [00:36:43]:
But going back to the pricing, yeah, it's it's right in line with everything else we've seen. That was one of the main initiatives that our CEO had when we we took this thing over was we wanna be affordable. We we are authors first, and we wanna be affordable for authors. Now, yeah, of course, we wanna be able to pay designers, so absolutely we're doing that as well. But we're we're we're not going to, you know, make sure everybody prices it within a certain range that's really small. Right? Because we don't wanna, like, preclude the ability for a designer to upload something that takes a lot more time and work and effort and then price that higher. We don't wanna prevent that. But we definitely foresee this marketplace continuing in that in that vein, which is $69 probably low low side and then 99 on the high side, generally speaking.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:25]:
Okay. And they are I'm assuming that the artist determine their prices. I'm sorry, Nick. You started talking about, the maximum price ranges. So are we do we have maximum price range for for a premade book covers, or are we completely leaving that up to the artist to determine?
Nick Thacker [00:37:43]:
Well, so right now, with the existing website, there is a maximum. I just can't remember what the number is, and I think it's around, like, $300. However, I've never seen a a book cover sold for that price on the website. There may be one in the past. I don't know. But because it's a marketplace, you know, the kind of meritocratic situation happens where, you know, the designer realizes, well, this isn't being sold for that price. I need to lower the price or whatever, and then vice versa. So if, you know, somebody goes, wow.
Nick Thacker [00:38:08]:
These are all 69 these are all $99, minor 69. Maybe I can raise the price, make a little bit more money as a designer. You know? The the reason I'm kinda being vague is I don't know what we wanna do with the with the new site. If we wanna have, like, a defined range that you have to be within, or if we just leave it open and see what happens in the marketplace. I probably think it's gonna
Jim Azevedo [00:38:27]:
be the formal yeah.
Nick Thacker [00:38:28]:
But yeah. But but there's gonna be some wiggle room that we wanna give the designer the ability to change that. And then, of course, what I said earlier is true. We have the ability now for designers to set promotional periods where they can run a sale for 5 days, and have their
Jim Azevedo [00:38:41]:
I love that. Prices. Yeah. Yeah. We know a thing or 2 about running sales with the Smashwords store and, you know Yeah. You're an author. We have a lot of authors on staff out there who do that sort of thing all the time. Let me bring up a a couple I wanna always be cognizant of how much time we have left and questions that are coming in from our audience.
Nick Thacker [00:39:01]:
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Let's answer some questions.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:02]:
Bring up one here from Leila Rose. Leila, appreciate your question. Leila asked, discussing fonts, does the site come with a robust collection of licensed fonts that could be used for covers? Can we bring our own licensed fonts?
Nick Thacker [00:39:17]:
Yes to both. Yep. So you go in there, you'll have whatever font you see in our system, you can use on your cover, and you're not gonna have to worry about any licensing or anything like that. You can also bring your own license fonts. Now there's the ability to upload a TTF or an OTF file, which is a font file, and use that. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna pass the liability through to you. So you have to make sure that you're licensing those fonts. If you can you know, if you made a font or, obviously, you can use that.
Nick Thacker [00:39:43]:
But if you bought a font from somewhere, we won't check that. We're not gonna have any way of seeing if you did that legally or not. So, yeah, just be just know that if you're a designer, yeah, you can bring your own font in, but it needs to be something that you actually have the the ability to license. And on that note, that won't be a site wide font, you know, that would just be in your account. Some of these little features that I'm I'm talking about don't exist yet, but they are on the road map for us. Right now, you can upload a font and everyone can use it. We'll have to limit that so that you can upload your own font and only you can use it because you bought the license for you, not the rest of all the all the authors.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:18]:
Perfect. Thanks, Leila. That was a great question. Alright. Let me get to another one here from, Jen. Thanks for the question, Jan. Jan asks, with the full wrap, can we change the text on the blur on the back cover without going through the artist?
Nick Thacker [00:40:35]:
You can't. Unfortunately, you're not able to do that with the existing website. Again, this is one of the back and forth things where you would send us the actual print template file, the PDF file you get from IngramSpark or Draft2Digital or, you know, whoever you're printing KDP print, and then send that to us. I would send that to the designer. They would design it in Illustrator or Photoshop, and it would send you back a flattened PDF, which means no layers. And the reason we do that, is because the the systems that you're uploading it to won't accept a PSD file, for example. It won't accept the layers. So it has to be flattened.
Nick Thacker [00:41:08]:
So for that reason, if you needed to change something after the fact, there would be a fee to change that. I again, road map wise, it's been seeing what's coming down the down the pipe. There's no reason we couldn't work on our system, and and add to it so that what you're doing with adding the text to the front cover only, you could do for the whole back cover and spine. I would love to see that. There'd still be a design component, right, because the artist still has to expand the background images or, you know, or replicate the front, whatever. Mhmm. But there's no reason to to say, you know, that we would never be able to offer, the ability for the author to go in and and change the text on the on the back and spine. I definitely want that to happen, Jen.
Nick Thacker [00:41:48]:
I think that's something that hopefully will work on very soon. But, yeah, right now, it's not something that we've actively been developing.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:56]:
K. Nick, can you touch upon what the, the new account setup is like for both authors and artists or what it will be like at bookcovers.com?
Nick Thacker [00:42:06]:
Sure. Yeah. It's a little bit different because 2 different entities here. 1, we we require payment, which means verification, identity, all that. So if you're an artist, obviously, we want to pay you. We're gonna keep it simple, though. It's gonna be PayPal. We're running, you know, branches through PayPal, and so you'll have to have a PayPal account to get paid.
Nick Thacker [00:42:23]:
So that's kind of the requirement. But because it's PayPal, it's international. It makes it easy to do that. It's just something you'll deal with with PayPal. K. And then once you decide to sign up, you'll be given a walk through. You know, there's literally a dialogue window that pops up. It says step 1 of 5.
Nick Thacker [00:42:37]:
And you go through, you read the terms of service, you agree to those, and then you choose what your storefront name will be, like your username on the website. And then you actually will get some instruction on how to design your banner for the storefront if you wanted to do that or you can skip it. And then finally, we ask for that, you know, payment information, the PayPal address, all that stuff. And then you're good. That you're signed up. You'll have to verify your email address, but then you're signed up. And you'll see once you're an artist, there's a there's a whole dashboard for our artists that is completely separate from the website, for from whatever other people see on the website. So you'll be able to see in cool little graphs how many sales you made the last week or the last month or the whole last year.
Nick Thacker [00:43:15]:
And you'll be able to see, you know, the the covers that are still listed for sale. You can, you know, change the price or run sales like we said, and all that dashboard stuff. It's it's just really fancy and really fun, and, I'm excited for you guys to see that. It's not ready yet, though. On the author side, it's very simple. It's really just give us your email address. And then once you're ready to buy a a book cover, you'll just like any other ecommerce website, you'll be asked for your payment method. So credit card or PayPal, anything like that.
Nick Thacker [00:43:41]:
And, of course, that's all secure. You know, it's all safe and everything. And so there's not there's really no no no question there, in my mind for that. That's gonna be very, very easy to do. And if you've been on the Internet at all in the last, you know, 20 years, you'll be familiar with that process. We're not changing that at all. So as an author, it's it's very, very simple.
Jim Azevedo [00:43:59]:
Cool. And it sounds like the artist probably should, you know, work on their banner or get a banner set up because you're essentially creating a storefront for them to showcase their cover designs.
Nick Thacker [00:44:09]:
Yeah. It won't be the only way to browse our store. You know, you'll see covers in different genres and all that just like the the existing site or just like any other premade book cover site. But we're adding this functionality because I think it's gonna be a game changer for designers, for artists. You'd be able our authors will be able to click on your your store name or your username, whatever you wanna call it, and then they'll go to your storefront. It'll have a cool banner and your little profile picture, and it'll explain a little bit about you as a designer. That's all something you can put in, and then it'll show all your coverage. So it's a really, really cool way of just kind of, hey.
Nick Thacker [00:44:40]:
I wanna work with these designers particularly and see what what premade book covers they've got already.
Jim Azevedo [00:44:45]:
Nice. That's gonna save a lot of time. Speaking of time, we're almost out of it here for this episode, but let me try to get you a couple more questions just real quickly here. From Enlange Books, they ask, can we send you guys an existing cover and have you laid the cover on Ingram on an Ingram's template? Is that something that's possible, Nick?
Nick Thacker [00:45:07]:
We we do that. Yep. Our in house designer, Dave, and I have both done that. Most of the designers that have done a lot of back cover spines for the existing authors for self public covers have done that as well. But, yeah, you would just need to get the actual print template file, the PDF file that I mentioned before. We've got instructions on how to do that. Send that to us, and then you'd pay for the the back cover spine, which currently is a $149. And then we take the cover, we we slap it on there, and then we design the back to match to make it look like it's all one cover, match the fonts, everything like that, and then send it back.
Nick Thacker [00:45:40]:
So not really that different than, if you were have if you've purchased the cover from us originally. Same process.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:48]:
Perfect. Other than, getting phase 2 out the door and having the site fully operational and and ready to accept new accounts, What else is on the horizon? Are you able to tell us anything that's, you know, coming down the pipe for maybe later this year or even into early next year? Well, in the big city guy, you don't don't, like, spill the beans completely.
Nick Thacker [00:46:11]:
No. No. No. That's great. I mean, I've already I've already kind of given away the the the fun ones that we're working on, next. Okay. After we've launched the site, I wanna see the affiliate program really, you know, get out there, and I wanna see the, the advertising
Jim Azevedo [00:46:24]:
system for the designers.
Nick Thacker [00:46:26]:
So both like, you know, in the past we've done advertisements. We we've offered the ability for a designer to pay for placement on the home page that just gets more eyeballs and more authors can see it. But we've never had a way for authors to get in that game, you know, and and and be able to to promote what what we're doing, and what they're doing. And so the affiliate program will be a way to do that. So the author can say, hey. I'm working with bookcovers.com and their designers over there, and if you click this link, then you'll get 10% off or whatever. You know, we don't know the terms yet, but it's gonna be a really cool Yeah. And hopefully fun way of of getting some promotion for all 3 parties, both bookcovers.com and the authors and artists, there.
Jim Azevedo [00:47:01]:
Interesting idea. Let's see. I wanna make sure I got to all the author and artist questions here. I think we did for the most part, and then we're out of time. So, Nick, I just I wanna kinda end here by asking what advice you would give to artists and authors out there. When it comes to having a successful business relationship with one another, what what kind of pointers would you ask or would you provide to them? Like, if you're gonna work with an artist for the first time, what are some some key tidbits you would advise authors as far as, you know, working with a corporate designer?
Nick Thacker [00:47:35]:
Yeah. That's that's a big that's a big question to answer. To say it succinctly, I would say try to catch me at a conference because I'll be I'll be talking about exactly that, you know, in the in the very near future. I know, Nick, I'm gonna be doing a talk on book cover design from an author perspective. So I know that that doesn't answer your question fully. There is actually a blog series on the new website that you can see right now that I've written on
Jim Azevedo [00:48:00]:
So glad you brought that up because that series is excellent.
Nick Thacker [00:48:03]:
Oh, thank you. Yeah. Appreciate that. Because I've been talking about this a lot. I mean, I just wrote a blog post for you, Jim. I mean, for another website that you had me write. But that's you know, we as authors need to understand at least something about design in order to know that first of all, we're getting what we what we need and what we want, but also so that we can work with that designer better. It I can't tell you as a designer and author, you know, but design mode now.
Nick Thacker [00:48:26]:
Put the design hat on. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have somebody, like, you know, look over your shoulder while you're designing or what are the the Internet version of that would be, where they're just like, do this. Okay. Now move that. Now do this. Now move that. So authors don't do that kind of thing. But if you don't know anything like that, if you've never worked with a designer before, you know, we don't buy it.
Nick Thacker [00:48:43]:
We're not scary, but not all of us. But there are some things you can learn about the design process specifically for book covers that you can find in those blog posts. I think it's 5 post series, where you can understand things like composition, genre, you know, things like that for just a basic level so that, you know, you at least understand what you're talking about when you work with a designer. And then designers understand that we authors are a weird kind of fickle bunch. Sorry, authors. I'm calling us out, but, we are. And, you know, we may not know what we want. And so just understand that, hey.
Nick Thacker [00:49:15]:
You may have to kinda pull that out of us sometimes. You may have to say Right.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:18]:
Well, can
Nick Thacker [00:49:18]:
you just 3, 4, 5 different covers in your genre that you like or maybe that you hate, and tell me why. That's a great question I always get from my designer, and and it it helps me clarify as an author. You know?
Jim Azevedo [00:49:31]:
So Yeah. It helps you speak the same language too.
Nick Thacker [00:49:34]:
That's what that's really what it comes down to, Jim. Yeah. You're just you're on the same page now. You're speaking the same language.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:39]:
Yeah. Overall, creatives. That's all I love. So go to book covers.com, click on the blog, and you can see that that 5 I said a 5 part series. You could read through that series. It's it's eye opening. I learned a lot. Alright.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:52]:
Well, we are at time here, Nick, already. So I wanna thank you, Nick, because this is super exciting. I'm excited for you and and all all the work that you put into this. I'm excited for the artists and the authors as well. This is gonna be fun. I can't wait to to until the the date when this thing is fully launched and ready for prime time. For all of you who are watching out there or listening to the podcast, thank you for being here with us. If you would do us a favor and like, share, comment, subscribe to this episode, it helps us spread the word out there and attract new guests and who can share their expertise and advice with the indie publishing community as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:35]:
Also, be sure to bookmark d2d.live or d2dlive.com. Listen to me. I'm tripping over my words, stumbling, mumbling through this. But if you go there do that. And you bookmark that yeah. You'll you'll see what the next topic is going to be and who our next guest is going to be. And, finally, if you are a new author or even if you are an established author who's maybe dipping their toe into the indie publishing waters for the first time, why not sign up for your free Draft2Digital account simply by going to draft2digital.com? Nick, thanks again for joining.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:15]:
I appreciate your time. I know you don't have much of it these days, so thanks for being here. For everybody out there in cyberspace, thank you so much for spending 45 minutes with us out here. We really appreciate your time as well. We hope this conversation was worthwhile for you. Nick, why don't you hang out in the green room there for a bit? Grab some M and M's. For everybody else, I'm going to show this quick 30 second commercial spot for a D2D Print. We will catch you here, same time, same place, next week.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:45]:
Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next week.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:51:47]:
Ebooks are great, but there's just something about having your words in print, something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That's why we created D2D Print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free beautiful templates to give your book a pro look, and We can even convert your ebook cover into a full wraparound cover for print. So many options for you and your books. And you can get started right now at draft2digital.com. That's it for this week's self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends, and start, build, and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.