Preparing your book for a festival listing

A portfolio card is read in about three seconds. The cover has to be legible at thumbnail size, which rules out thin type, low contrast and detail that disappears when the image shrinks.

The blurb should promise one thing clearly. Two sentences that name the situation and the tension will always outperform a paragraph that lists themes.

Biographies work best short and specific: where you are from, what else you have written, and one detail a reader will remember. Job titles and accolades rarely earn their space.

Check every link before you submit — the purchase page, your site, your social profile. A card that sends a reader to a dead page has done worse than nothing.