New Author Business Cards!

Running out of author business cards is both a bother and an opportunity. You could just get the same cards over again and be boring, OR you could take this chance to revise and improve them! And (if you’re me) then fail, and learn from my mistakes! I chose the latter, and while it turned out awesome in so many ways, there was one little hiccup from which I’ll definitely have some lessons learned.

Learn From My Mistakes

So, I’ve been using Canva to make my author business cards for a while, and an aspect of their business cards I’d never considered before is the fact that they assume that your author business card is meant to be held in landscape, instead of portrait orientation. That means that the back of the card is flipped along what they assume to be the vertical axis, but which was, for my newest cards, the horizontal axis. 

If you think of them like playing cards, it makes the back upside down relative to the front. I never realized this before because my first draft of author business cards was all landscape, and even when I went to a landscape front and a portrait back, the flipping orientation still seemed natural (since I had 1 side in each orientation, probably either axis would have worked). 

Basically, if you rotate my new cards the way you’d expect, the backside will always seem upside down. Learn from my mistakes!

The good news is: 1. Both sides look awesome! And 2. You can get around the flipping issue by just a dramatic vertical flip. (Although, then I need to remember to do a second dramatic flip after the first so that people can see the cool cover they were interested in in the first place. Learn from my mistakes!)

Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned 1: Check your orientation! They do have a 3D rotation of the cards you can see in advance, so before you print your own business cards, check it out so that you verify the front and back are oriented the way you want them.

I’ve tweaked the design for the next batch, and I’ll be more careful in the future, so that’s one lesson learned I hopefully won’t need to relearn.

Lessons Learned 2: Story covers on author business cards look fantastic! (Thanks for the idea, Dan Willis!) Even with the goof, I still like my new cards. I managed to get the story cover for the Frog Apocalypse on it, which really adds to the pitch for getting it as a free short story.

Fail Faster! Make more mistakes! Learn all the lessons!

In other news, I’ve written a few more scenes for my new book, working title “Save All Side Characters,” including some action-packed scenes to start it off with a bang, and a powerful “Aha moment” scene. The shape of the whole story feels like it’s slowly coming together, and if I can get it even close to the vision I’ve got in my head, it should be a lot of fun. I’m so excited to share this story with y’all, just as soon as I can get it finished and polished and ready for publication! Just keep writing!

I know it won’t be perfect, and that “polishing” stage will almost certainly involve some heavy revision, but as they say, “Fail Faster!” Just like my author business cards, you make the most progress by trying your best, seeing how it turns out, and improving from there! Learn from my mistakes, because I will! And then, go make some of your own!

Have a great month, and I’ll see y’all later!

LET’S GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!