Armchair BEA is the experience for book bloggers to participate in Book Expo America (BEA) from the comfort of their homes. This experience is created lovingly by book bloggers specifically for our peers who for whatever reason are not able to participate in the main conference in Chicago. We bring publishers, authors, and bloggers together in celebrating our love for all things literary by hosting celebrations such as sneak peeks, daily discussion topics, and sponsored giveaways.

If you would like to know more, please visit http://www.armchairbea.com/p/faq.html

Today as part of Day 2 #ArmchairBEA we are talking about Aesthetic Concerns: Books & Blogs
The Books:
I do look at covers for two reasons, to get an idea of what the book is about from the cover art and the blurb on the back or the inside flap of the dustjacket and to determine if there may be content I would prefer not to expose myself to based on the Author, Publisher and cover design. The cover art quality also tends to give a sampling of the quality of the work inside the book. If there is thought, effort and time put into a well-designed cover as opposed to some slapped together stock art that you see on several books then whether or not the cover cost money you can tell the author or publisher invested in it and more than likely invested in creating a quality piece inside those covers as well.

The Blog:

I haven’t consciously put it all together as branding but from the beginning I wanted to create a “look” for my site that said me. I am still working on the tweaking as I’ve had to update themes a few times and the modifications have to be redone in the coding each time. Although WordPress themes are getting more customizable with fewer coding changes needed to make the big changes like headers and backgrounds. I’ve updated my files so that more of the content including graphics are directly in the blog databases and am learning other tweaks to my setup that streamline things. Custom menus and minimizing the categories then tagging with additional topics or keywords that I want to be sure are attached to the post.

Are you at BEA this year? Chime in with comments about your experience at the conference. Are you participating in #ArmchairBEA? Please join in the discussion by posting a link to your post(s) for today and/or respond to what I’ve shared in the comments.

Related Posts