In My Opinion

Specific Tips and Tricks

These are common problem areas I've encountered. If you find something that's wrong or incomplete, let me know. This is all about learning for everybody, myself included. And, again, add your own tips and tricks down in the comments, and click the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button to get to my "Archives: Tips & Tricks" reading list for some oldies (but goodies).

1. Titles. Always, always, always capitalize your book title. There are words you shouldn't capitalize, but there's a lot of variation in the rules about this. A good general rule is to lowercase minor words that are three or less letters long ("a," "an," "the," "and," "or," etc.), unless they start or end the title. Nouns are never minor words, which is why I've capitalized "my" in this book title. The rules can get pretty complicated, so if you're ever in doubt about a particular word, you're not wrong to capitalize it, and if you can't figure out which words not to capitalize, it's fine to just capitalize the entire title.

Examples:
Capitalization with lowercase rules (my preference): Specific Tips and Tricks
Capitalization without lowercase rules (not my preference, but okay): Specific Tips And Tricks
Only capitalizing first letter (not okay): Specific tips and tricks
No capitalization (not okay): specific tips and tricks

As far as chapter titles go, this is your preference. I like to capitalize my chapter titles, but there are authors who don't, and that's fine. Just keep it consistent. If you capitalize one chapter, capitalize all of them. If you only capitalize the first letter of the first word of the chapter, then do that throughout. I really don't like completely uncapitalized chapter titles, but it's your stylistic choice, and if that's what you want to do, again, just be consistent.

Examples:
Full capitalization (my preference): Specific Tips and Tricks
Only capitalizing first letter (not my preference, but okay): Specific tips and tricks
No capitalization (not my preference, but okay): specific tips and tricks

2. Covers. Your book cover and your book title are the two most important parts of catching a prospective reader's eye when they're scrolling through Wattpad looking for their next read, so you need to take the time to get this right. Now, I'm not a graphics designer or anything, but I can drop a few tips here. And if you just don't want to deal with graphics at all, I've put together a reading list with graphics services I've found across the server, and these wonderful, talented people will do the work for you. Bless them: https://www.wattpad.com/list/1568194624

First, the book title and author's name need to go on the cover! If they aren't there, it's just a pretty picture.

Second, that text - at least the title - needs to be big enough to read before you click on the book to go to its landing page. Yes, that can be tricky. It looks fine, and then you save it and scroll through on Wattpad, and you can't read it. I've been there, and it's annoying, but you just have to go back in and edit it again.

Third, and this is my preference, but if a book is part of a series, I like the series name on the cover, too. And I hate "by so-and-so." You don't need the "by." I know it's your book. That little word takes up precious space on that all-important, very limited rectangle of pixels. Just get rid of it. If doing so doesn't help you, it will at least stop triggering me. ;)

Canva is the built-in tool here on Wattpad for making covers, and I recommend sitting down and playing with it to see what's available. There are tons of pre-made templates on there that you can use, although you have to be careful about choosing ones that are free, unless you want to pay for higher-quality goodies. It won't ask for payment until you're ready to publish, so you can always change your mind (and your cover). The cover for this book was one of those pre-made templates, and it was free. I moved the text around a bit and added in the text on the notebook, sticking with the same font as the title and selecting colors from the palette provided. It took me over an hour, but I really like it. I stuck with free, pre-made templates for my One Shot and Poems books, too, but I couldn't find anything that felt right for my original story, Second Chances, so I took the plunge, took a few days and many hours, and ended up with a cover I created that I really like (out of free elements, because, ya know, broke). That was really satisfying. I still don't like to do my own covers. I'm not looking forward to doing another one. Fortunately, I now have that reading list to reference when I want to skip out on doing it next time. Yay!

Desygner is the tool for the app. I've never used it and know nothing about it, so my best suggestion is to do the same thing as I did with Canva: take the time to sit down and play with it. Or hire somebody else. :)

3. To be continued...