How to Letter Comics
Let’s say you’re writing a comic, and you want to indicate that your character is out of breath and speaking French from the other side of a closed door. How do you do it?
Nate Piekos knows. Although most of us never give it a second thought, comics have an elaborate, established visual language for speech balloons and their contents. Nate understands this language, and he’s put together a terrific guide to all the variations. It’s a great read, even if you have no interest in ever making a comic for yourself. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how many of the conventions you already recognize and understand fluently.
The British newspaper, The Guardian, recently asked a number of well known authors a fairly simple simple question: do you enjoy writing? More than a few do not, but they keep doing it anyway.
Artist Lou Romano has a wonderful post on the work that went into designing the characters and settings for Pixar’s new film, UP. It’s fascinating to see the amount of preparation that goes into a production like this, from conceptual art to sculptures of the key characters. Really inspirational, and well worth a look, even if you haven’t seen the movie.
The Book Cover Archive is a compendium of the best of cover design, organized in some really useful ways. It’s the work of designers Ben Pierratt and Eric Jacobsen, and they’ve clearly put a lot of thought into the project. Not only can you search by authors, illustrators, and publishers, but also 
As an author, I am extremely interested in the idea of e-books and their impact on the future of publishing. Mandy Brown, a writer and designer, takes an interesting perspective on the issue: as long as we’re calling it an e-book, we’re kind of missing the point.