by Harper, Kate
How to Make an e-Book Cover:
For Non-Designers
By Kate Harper
All Rights Reserved © 2012 Kate Harper
Berkeley, California
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
PART A: Beginner’s Tips for eBook Covers
1. Learn how people shop online.
2. Make title text large.
3. Put dark text on light backgrounds.
4. Don’t clutter text with images.
5. Choose a short title.
6. The title should say what is inside.
7. Avoid white backgrounds.
8. Don’t be afraid of snapshots.
9. Get it published instead of get it perfect.
PART B: Tutorial #1: How to Make a Book Cover Using Microsoft Word.
1. Select Photo.
2. Create Title Text.
3. Import Image.
4. Create Color Box.
5. Put Image in Background.
6. Adjust if Necessary.
7. Convert Cover to jpg.
8. Trim Edges.
9. Resize Cover for Bookstore.
10. Upload Book.
PART C: Tutorial #2: How to Make a Book Cover Using Adobe Photoshop.
PART D: Resources
Where to Publish Your Book
Free Books on eBook Publishing
EBook Writing Podcasts
EBook Writing Webcasts
Best eBook Writing Blogs
EBook Writing Forums
Freebie for my Readers!
INTRODUCTION
This illustrated book will show you how to make your own eBook cover, even if you are not a designer. It is intended for the indie writer who is on a budget and who wants to publish and sell their own book online in stores such Amazon.com and the Apple iBookstore.
Selling your book in these stores will allow customers to buy and read it on multiple eReading devices such as the Kindle, iPad, iPhone and many others.
In this book you will learn:
• How to design a basic book cover, using step-by-step visual instructions.
• How to use your own photos to create an attractive design.
• How to prepare the cover at the correct size and format for an eBook store.
• How to make your cover stand out in an online bookstore like Amazon.com
• Why eBook covers should be designed differently than printed book covers, so that they sell better.
• How to use a word processor and/or graphics program to create a book cover.
Sometimes writers spend months working on a book and then get stuck when they try to publish it in an eBook store. They cannot complete the process because they don’t have a book cover, and are surprised to find out it can cost several hundred dollars to hire a designer.
I don’t believe indie authors need to go to extraordinary efforts and expense to have a cover designed by a professional when they first start out. In fact, I think eBook covers should be designed differently from traditionally printed covers. You might be able to read 12-point type on a printed book cover, but you will not be able to read that same type in an online store because book covers are displayed at the size of a postage stamp.
On the other hand, if you are publishing a printed book, or are a full time professional writer, it is important to invest in a top rate book design. But for the rest of us, we don’t need to have the perfect layout or the latest font in order to create a cover that grabs a customer’s attention. I believe it is possible to create a legible, tasteful and colorful book cover without being a professional designer.
PART A:
Beginner’s Tips for eBook Covers
1. Learn how people shop online.
People generally scan images before they read any text. This is why good blogs often have a lot of images. It is common for a reader to only spend a few seconds on a webpage before they click through to another site, and this is also true when it comes to shopping online.
For example, if you do a search for “dog” in the Amazon bookstore, you will get about 12 different books displayed on the first page of your results. When you look at that page, notice where your eyes go first.
Most likely you will be drawn toward the book cover image first, before you even read the title, price or rating displayed on right side of the image. If you aren’t convinced, look this same page without any images:
This page looks confusing. It’s harder to scan products that don’t have images. It is also hard to separate the book titles from all of the other information on the page. There are several colors, stars, and numbers, and they are all competing for your attention.
This is the why a book cover image is very important. It has a great influence over a customer when they are searching for titles and purchasing books.
The main purpose of an online book cover is to encourage the customer to click on the title and read the book’s description, sample pages, index and table of contents. But if your cover doesn’t grab their attention from the beginning, they may just pass it by. This can be unfortunate if your book was on a topic the customer was searching for.
2. Make title text large.
It is important for customers to be able to read the title of your book when it is about one inch tall. This is the average size of most book covers displayed in Amazon store search results. Once a customer clicks on your book, the second page will display your book a little larger, at approximately two inches high. Either way, they are both very small, and if you can’t read the title on the cover, chances are the customer is not going to click any further, and they won’t read the book description.
Most printed book covers are designed for display on a bookstore shelf and information about the book is on the spine, inside flap, dust jacket, and back cover. It is easy to pick it up and learn more about the content. Even if your have an award winning book cover design, if you put that same book cover in an eBook store, the title alone might be difficult to read.
Here are some examples of book covers I found on Amazon that are hard to read because the title text is too small.
If your book has a great image with emotional impact, but the customer cannot read the title, chances are they will not click through to get more information. Instead, they will probably scan down and look at the next book below yours. You might think they would first glance to the right and read the title (before they scan down), but since the eyes are drawn towards images, people have the tendency to scan book covers first. You might be unaware that your own eyes do this, and it can happen in just a few seconds.
Even though the Amazon store encourages customers to “Click and Look Inside,” by placing a banner above their books, the odds of a customer doing this are less if the title on the book cover is not legible.
3. Put dark text on light backgrounds.
If you have ever tried to read a website that has a black background and white text, you have probably experienced eye strain or found yourself squinting after a few minutes. This is because it is easier for the eyes to read dark text on a light background. If the text you are reading right now was white, and sitting on a black background, it would be much more difficult to read. Therefore, try to make your book title using dark text on a light background.
Notice in the examples below. Both are attractive covers, but the “Dog Breed Bible” title is easier to read when it is thumbnail size.
There are many beautiful book covers created by graphic designers who do the opposite, by putting light text on dark backgrounds, but this is not always easily accomplished since it depends on carefully selected color palettes, blending mode
s and imagery. If you are a beginner and have trouble getting your title to stand out, try putting dark text on a light background. It will probably be easier to read online.
4. Don’t clutter text with images.
Another problem that occurs when book covers are reduced down to postage stamp size, is that their title can disappear inside of an image like in the following examples:
This is why it is important to avoid nesting images behind your book title. You want your customers to read the title without the image interfering with the text.
5. Choose a short title.
As mentioned earlier, it is important to use large text in your title, but in order to do that, you will need to limit your title to as few words as possible. Otherwise, they will not all fit on your cover.
If you can’t figure out how to decrease the number of words in your title, then try increasing the size of the most important words in the title, such as in the sample below.
Even though the title is long: “How to Publish and Sell Your Article on the Kindle,” the words “Your Article on the Kindle” are the main words emphasized. They give the customer an inkling of what the subject of the book is about, and entices them to click through to learn more. This cover also uses two different text colors, to create a natural break between thoughts.
6. The title should say what is inside.
It’s reasonable for a writer to want a witty book title, but when shopping online, customers primarily want to know what is inside of a book. Shoppers tend to avoid clicking through to read descriptions if they cannot decipher the meaning of a mysterious book title.
This is why the title should get straight to the point and clearly describe what is inside of the book. If your book is about building a website, it’s better to call it “How to Build a Website” rather than “Web Highways,” or if your book is about living in Thailand, it’s better to call it “The Ten Best Places to Live in Thailand” versus “Living in the Land of Lemongrass!”
Fiction books can be more challenging when creating titles. They cannot be easily described, just like movie titles cannot easily explain a plot. So when creating an enticing title for a fiction book, it might help to add a descriptive subtitle. For example, if your romance novel is called “Passages,” and it is about a long distance relationship, you could add a subtitle that reads “A romance across continents” or if your poetry book’s title is “Nights in October” you might have a subtitle called “Poems by the Fireside.”
While I may not be selecting award winning title samples, my main point is: Help your customer clearly understand what your book is about from the title.
Unlike a printed book, you cannot pick up an eBook and flip it over and read the description on the back cover, and while it is still possible to get access to the description on the website, the truth is, people are less patient on websites than they are when browsing in a physical bookstore.
One rule of thumb I learned when studying web design was that you should always assume that the person visiting you website “has to go to the bathroom!” This might seem like an odd and humorous design recommendation, but it refers to the fact that people are impatient when it comes to shopping online, and they may only look at a page for one second and then immediately jump to another page. This is why it is important to select a book title that captures the content of your book as quickly and easily as possible.
Here are some examples of dog books that clearly explain what is inside:
“How to Housebreak your Dog in 7 Days” and “Healthy Dog Cookbook.”
7. Avoid white backgrounds.
One challenge of designing book covers for eBook stores, is that the background color of the web page is often white. This is also true of Amazon. Books with white covers don’t always display well on white web pages because there is no boundary between the edge of the book and the beginning of the white background. The book can disappear into the page since the edges are undefined, like in the example below.
If your cover is currently white, and you don’t know what color you should change it to, try a very light grey, light yellow or light blue. Or perhaps put a strong border around the edge. This will allow the book to pop out from its background when displayed in the eBook store.
8. Don’t be afraid of snapshots.
You don’t have to be a professional photographer in order to create an image for your book cover. Historically, photography has always been a skill that took years of training, and even today the most unrefined eye can recognize the difference between a professionally shot photograph versus a grainy snapshot in a magazine. But unlike printed images, digital images posted online or on eReaders are more forgiving. It is much easier to get away with merely using a snapshot from your digital camera when making a book cover. The image does not always appear grainy or unattractive.
It is harder to distinguish a grainy image from a sharp image on a digital screen because the resolution is much lower than a printed book. Because of this, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to using your own photographs.
Before designing your book cover, take a walk around your neighborhood and photograph colorful objects. Try to select items that are related to the topic of your book, but make sure they do not have copyright and legal restrictions. For example, avoid photographing faces, art, or trademarked items, unless you have written permission from the owner or a model release from the person. For more information on the basics of digital photography, I highly recommend the book “Taking Stock.” http://kateharperblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/make-money-selling-stock-photos-book.html
If your book is about cooking or gardening, you can go into a store and ask permission to photograph their vegetable produce or flowers. Most storeowners are agreeable to such requests as long as you ask ahead of time and don’t photograph professionally designed products such as furniture or fabric.
Here are some photos I took while walking around in my neighborhood. I looked for items that had rich textures and colors. These are the elements you want when selecting a photo for your book cover: things that are bright and colorful, with an interesting pattern. A colored box with a block of text can be dropped on top of these images, and even the daisies below have a convenient blank space for a book title.
Even if you don’t have photography experience, if you practice capturing brilliant colors, shapes and textures, one of your images will be perfect to put on a book cover.
9. Get it published instead of get it perfect.
When making a basic book cover, the goal of the following tutorials is to make a cover that is better than what the Amazon placeholder looks like, which is usually something like this:
It’s possible you like this design and would prefer to use it, but if you do, your book will look exactly like a thousand other books on the Amazon website, because those writers did not upload a book cover. It’s like having a profile page without a photo, and opting to have a grey shadow represent your face. I believe it is better to put up any cover, rather than resort to using the Amazon placeholder.
If you decide later that you don’t like your cover, you can always change it. All you need to do is simply upload a new book cover to the store.
Some of the steps I suggest in the following tutorials might seem unprofessional from a graphic designer’s point of view, but I think it is better to get a basic book cover up on an eBook store, rather than wait until you have the perfect cover, design skills, or mulling over whether you want to pay several hundred dollars to have one made.
I’d rather see a writer on a budget try to do their own cover without incurring costs, especially when they first start out. If you decide to spend $500 on a top-notch book cover for your “How to Start a Sesame Seed Farm” book, and then later find out your book isn’t very popular, you might be disappointed. But you’re going to feel even worse if you can’t recover the costs of your initial investment of the book cover.
This is why I think it is better to jump in, publish your
book, and create a basic book cover that clearly describes what your book is about.
It’s better to get it published than to get it perfect.
PART B:
Tutorial 1: How to Make a Simple Book Cover Using Microsoft Word
In this tutorial I am going to make a book cover for a hypothetical gardening book. It is about growing limes.
You can follow along, substituting your own photos and text as we go along.
1. SELECT PHOTO
First, select a photograph or image you would like to use for the background of your book cover and put it on your desktop
I went to my iPhoto image library and selected a photograph of a lime tree in front of my house.
When you select an image, it’s best to select a photo that has the general shape of a book (portrait orientation), and not a square or landscape orientation.
Drag your image onto your desktop and give it a descriptive name so it will be easy to locate later.
2. CREATE TITLE TEXT
Now open a blank page on your Microsoft Word program.
Type in the title of your book, and your author name.
Do as many of the following formatting options as you want during this step. You can always change them later.
• Make your title large, and your name (or subtitle) underneath in a smaller font size.