top of page

Step Ten - Cover Creator

They say that you should not judge a book by its cover, but we have all done it. There have been many books that I have read over the years that I have stumbled across because I liked the cover design or even the title.

Now unless you are George RR Martin, JK Rowling, Kate Mosse, Dan Brown or a similarly well known author already, then your book is going to need all the help it can possibly get when it sits alongside hundreds of other titles in the book store.

Remember apart from a small percentage of people that may have heard of you from social media, your book is going to be thrown in at the deep end and how good it looks at the initial glance may determine if it sinks or swims.

Now there are a few ways of creating a book cover. If you go through Amazon then they have an online cover creator that you can use. Here you can select from one of 10 base designs and lets you import some of your own images as well as colours and fonts.

The method that I used for my cover was Photoshop. I obtained the dimensions of the cover size that the kindle supports (1,563 x 2500 pixels) and then based my cover around that, trying to make it as bold and eye catching as possible whilst keeping in the fantasy theme.

The other alternative is of course to outsource your cover. I wanted to do every part of my book myself but there is no shame in getting a talented book cover designer to do the hard work for you. There are many companies online that advertise this service and there are even some artists from deviantart.com that do commissions for a low cost.

Whatever you decide to do, your cover has to be impactful. There is no point in having an amazing tale but no one to read it because they have been deterred by the cover. I got a few designs drawn up before I decided on my final cover. I then showed them to a group of friends and family and got them to vote on what one they preferred, at least then you have a better sense of what public opinion will be.

bottom of page