Sarah Arrow

Last week when I wrote about ebooks I mentioned that we found it useful to have a custom graphic designed for the cover and this has helped differentiate our ebook from all the others.

Our cartoon was created by London’s leading cartoon and caricaturist, Simon Ellinas.

I had a few questions for Simon about what he does…

How long have you been drawing for?

I’ve been drawing ever since childhood.
Does using images/cartoons make a difference when selling ebooks?

Cartoons in an e-book would make ME more likely to read it. So I daresay it would be the same for the majority of the public. They break up the text, illustrate and make memorable important points and make the whole thing look a lot more professional.

How did you get into doing the cartoons for ebooks and other books?

People ask me to do cartoons for all sorts of reasons including ebooks. Websites, publications, presentations. Anywhere where a picture could paint a thousand words.

What’s the best tip you can give someone about cartoons for their ebook?

Cartoons in an ebook must inform the reader about the content but not distract them from it. The message must be reinforced by the cartoons. A large cartoon at the start of each chapter and then one or two simpler ones within each chapter seems to be a good formula. It’s a good idea to develop a cartoon character to feature throughout to give the ebook identity and cohesiveness.

What do you enjoy drawing the most?

I’ve always been a people person, so I enjoy drawing people. This is useful in terms of ebooks as most of them are trying to communicate something important to people.

Have you done your own ebook?

No, but I am writing a book which has been accepted by a publisher. It will feature cartoons. Watch this space.

Anything you would like to add Simon?

You can see my cartoon work at http://cartoono.co.uk/. My humour and satire site, sending up the news is at http://humour.co.uk/ and my writing site, Screams of Consciousness is at http://the-writer.co.uk/. I welcome comments on all of these.

If you take a look at Simon’s website, you can see his range of work and the quality is exceptional, there he mentions that people stop to look longer at a good caricature or cartoon. If you could have cartoons on your website, would it increase your websites ‘sticky-ness’?

Sarah