Starseer: From Illustration to Published Novel

The Project

Every discipline at once — and no room to get any of them wrong

Starseer is a YA fantasy novel. It is also the most technically complete project in this portfolio, because it required every skill simultaneously: original illustration, cover design for both print and digital storefronts, 300-page InDesign typesetting with custom automation, print production to KDP manufacturing specs, Amazon A+ e-commerce content, and a full reader acquisition funnel.

There was no client to approve decisions and no team to catch mistakes. Every choice — from the celestial chart composition behind the cover character to the GREP pattern that automates orphan control across 300 pages — was mine to make correctly the first time.

Cover Design & Cross-Platform Packaging

One cover — designed to win on a shelf and a 200px thumbnail simultaneously

The transition from raw illustration to finished book cover required a separate, rigorous design pass. Title lettering in the Cinzel family was chosen for its classical authority and legibility at small sizes. The author name sits in a lighter weight above the title — a deliberate hierarchy that follows genre conventions while remaining distinctive.

The final cover was stress-tested across every surface it would appear on: physical hardcover, paperback, Kindle store thumbnail, Amazon A+ page, website hero, and social media. A cover that looks spectacular at full bleed and illegible at 200px is a product failure.

Cross-platform consistency — hardcover and Kindle edition side by side. Same composition, same hierarchy, same instant recognition.

Physical product — the hardcover as it exists in the world.

Typography System & InDesign Engineering

300 pages of fiction require the same systematic discipline as a financial document

Most designers who work in InDesign use manual formatting. I build systems. For Starseer, the interior was engineered using a cascading paragraph style hierarchy — text_body, text_no_indent, chapter_number, drop_cap, block_quote — with each style precisely calibrated to the book's trim size, leading, and optical margins.

The critical GREP pattern embedded in the text_body style (\<(\s?(\S+)){2}$) automatically applies a no_break character style to prevent orphaned single words at paragraph ends — across all 300 pages, automatically, without a single manual intervention. This is the kind of system a former Hachette editor can trust.

GREP automation panel — orphan control embedded directly into the paragraph style. Fires automatically on every text reflow.

Interior spread — custom star-field endpaper and chapter opening with drop cap, constellation ornament, and optical margin alignment.

Go-to-Market Execution

The product was complete. Then the real work started.

Publishing a novel on Amazon KDP is not just uploading a PDF. The e-commerce product page is a designed artifact in its own right. Amazon A+ Content — the rich media module that appears below the fold on product listings — requires its own visual system: character introduction panels, world-building imagery, and banner assets that convert browser traffic into readers.

I designed and built the full A+ Content suite, a dedicated author website with newsletter integration, and the complete social media launch assets — creating a reader acquisition funnel that converted 600 subscribers in the first launch window.

Amazon A+ Content — custom publisher banner, character introduction panels, and editorial imagery designed to convert product page visitors into buyers.

Author website — newsletter signup integrated with Amazon purchase link, resulting in 600 subscribers acquired at launch.

End-to-End Process

Six disciplines. One project. No external dependencies.

Email Marketing & Automation

A two-email welcome sequence — built and coded in Mailchimp & Beefree

The reader acquisition funnel didn't end at the website signup. Every subscriber entered a two-stage automated welcome sequence, designed to deliver immediate value, build trust, and convert passive signups into active readers who leave reviews. Both emails were built natively in Mailchimp using Beefree's HTML editor — not drag-and-drop templates.

The sequence logic: Email 1 delivers the free eBook immediately and sets expectations. Email 2, sent after a read delay, requests a review at the precise moment the reader is most likely to have finished — turning a lead into a public advocate.