Those of you who follow this blog with any regularity know that included with my other duties as publisher and CEO of WMG, I am also the lead book designer.

There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is my skill and experience as a designer and my deep love for the design arts.

My design background began with newspaper and magazines but expanded into books when I entered the book publishing business. I have since designed more than 1,000 book covers. I’m regularly approached to do freelance book design, but rarely do I take on a project. I simply don’t have time.

I do teach design workshops for WMG on occasion, but book design is shifting so fast these days, that it can be hard to keep those current.

So, when I announce a new design workshop, interest is usually high. As was the case with my most recent workshop, co-taught with Dean Wesley Smith, called Series Branding.

We structured this workshop rather differently that those I’ve done in the past. For this workshop, I designed the book covers for the students, with some input from them ahead of time. I had them send me their title, series name, author name, blurb and three pieces of art they felt fit their book. I took it from there and created an InDesign template file they could use for future books in the series.

The results were even better than I expected.

Even more surprising was the way this workshop has energized my passion for book design. It’s been a while since I did sixteen book covers in three days. And these are all very different books by very different authors.

I had fun. Great fun. Enough fun that I’m reconsidering my insistence that this would be a one-time thing.

We’ll see.

But in the meantime, keep an eye out for these books. I can’t wait to see what their next books in the series look like.

And don’t forget we have oodles of workshops and lectures available on all aspects of book creation and publishing here.

Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer.