Hello!

I now have the cover design for the Kindle version of Kill the HiPPO. It's feeling like a real book now!

The cover is designed to stand out in Amazon thumbnails—Amazon is the main source of sales for this type of self-published book, so it is important to optimise for the buyer's experience on Amazon.

The cover design for the print version is still in progress because I overlooked that it needs back cover text. I quickly wrote a draft a couple of days ago, let it simmer overnight, then rewrote it and sent it to the cover designer. The tight constraints on both time and word count helped - something that we discuss in chapter 5, "The Power of Constraints".

I'm still on target for the book to publish by the end of this month, March 2026.

The pre-publication todo list:

• Copyediting to strengthen the prose DONE!
• Finalise illustrations DONE!
• Interior page layouts for paperback, ebook, and PDF DONE!
• Get some ISBNs - I need separate ones for each format (e.g. paperback, Kindle) - 2/2 DONE!
• Create cover images - extremely important because people do, actually, "buy a book based on its cover" - 1/2 DONE
• Proofreading to fix typos and grammar - IN PROGRESS
• Final review readers to gather pre-launch testimonials - HAPPENS AFTER PROOFREADING
• Set up print-on-demand (using Amazon's "Kindle Direct Publishing")
• Create an Amazon book page that sells

And then an important post-publication task:

• Create and execute a marketing plan.

I have some ideas about this, and I'll write about it soon.

Until next time,

Steve
​​​killthehippo.com​​