Videos are becoming more widely used. That’s great. There is nothing like a video for retaining interest for a longer period of time.

But…

• Videos on Instagram mobile auto play.
• Videos on Instagram default to playing without sound.
• People read Instagram with the sound off.

When you post a landscape image to Instagram the GUI offers the ‘pretence’ that you can render landscape images with the [] little landscape icon, and as you go through the posting process it seems as though Instagram is going to render it that way - and it does - but only on the actual post view.

In the feed view it is truncated.

I’m lucky that I primarily write ’non fiction’ and ’technical books’ so my covers do not have to be particularly eye catching.

I used LeanPub to create my latest computer book. It was simple to use and since the source is markdown it is easy to version control and manipulate automatically.

I was putting off the print version though as I though it would be hard.

But it wasn’t.

You do not need expensive software to create book covers.