The Patent Beast Patent Shock series is available on Amazon. I had originally created the interior spot illustrations for the books several years before joining Fish IP Law full time.
While working at the firm, I noticed that one of the books was showing as unavailable on Amazon. I asked if I could take over management of the Amazon KDP account and rebuild the series, and the partner was happy to turn the project over to me.
At the time, I had never worked in Adobe InDesign, so I learned the program specifically for this project. I then rebuilt each book from the ground up and redesigned the covers to give the series a cleaner, more contemporary look.
The books turned out to be an excellent introduction to professional book production. Each one includes front matter, introductions, extensive text, frequent illustrations, footnotes, appendices, glossaries, and indexes. Working through all of those elements taught me a great deal about page layout, typography, styles, document organization, and preparing books for print-on-demand publishing through Amazon KDP.
As a lifelong book lover, I also cared a great deal about the finished product. I have purchased print-on-demand books that suffered from poor typography, inconsistent formatting, and little apparent attention to production quality, and I was determined that these books would look as clean and professional as possible. I read, reread, proofed, and reproofed each volume, correcting both layout and textual issues until I was satisfied that the finished books were as polished and error-free as I could make them.
It was one of the projects I was most proud of during my time at Fish IP Law because it allowed me to combine illustration, graphic design, editing, typography, and book production in a single project.
I also began work on Patent Magic, another book in the series, including its design and production setup. That manuscript remained unfinished, however, so the book was never completed or published.
This is an almost complete book cover that I did for a freelance client while I was working with Fish IP Law. He came with the idea and I created the artwork and laid out the pages.
