Now authors can make DIY book covers with easy-to-use, drag-and-drop design apps
by Ruth Harris
In the early days of self-publishing, authors who didn’t know know coding had to hire formatters to make their books cyber-ready. Since then, formatting has become part of many writing programs. Word processors like MSWord, Scrivener and Pages will output ebook files and apps like Vellum (Mac only) and Jutoh (Pc and Mac) make it easy to create well-formatted, upload-ready files themselves.
The days of the pricey formatter and frustrating waits for edits and revisions or even minor corrections (typos!) are mostly gone.
Ian Andrew, a former Microsoft trainer turned indie author, offers a step-by-step guide to formatting an ebook in MSWord.
As similar transformation has been taking place with book design. Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop apps have made it possible for authors—even those who don’t know PhotoShop or think they don’t have design skills—to create attractive, pro-level, genre-appropriate book covers.
In my decades as an editor and publisher, I’ve spent a lot of time in cover meetings. While editors, marketing departments and sales managers contributed ideas, the art director quickly sketched images (called “thumbnails”) to show us what our ideas would look like when transformed into visual concepts. From that first quick sketch, more ideas would lead to new ideas, second thoughts, and other changes until everyone agreed on a version that would form the basis for the eventual cover.
We made decisions about:
- Photo or illustration?
- Poster or type cover?
- Spot art or full page bleed?
- genre?
- color?
- font?
- The competition.
- What’s selling?
- Why?
- What isn’t?
- Why not?
The DIY Book Cover
When you create a DIY book cover, you will address all the same topics. Several easy-to-use, drag-and-drop on-line apps (some FREE) will let you quickly transform your ideas into professional-looking, genre-specific covers.
BookBrush, offers customizable cover templates in a variety of genres, quick, easy ways to change fonts and text plus clickable buy buttons and one-click 3-D covers. There’s a user forum to help if you get stuck plus lots of extra templates.
Canva, similar to BookBrush, differs in the details and provides an excellent intro to design principles. Dave Chesson wrote a post about how to design a professional-looking book cover in Canva. He goes into detail about which fonts go with what fictional genres and how to add pro effects to your cover.
Snappa, also with customizable templates, preset eBook cover dimensions and drag-and-drop ease, is still another site non-designers can use to make high quality attractive covers.
Here’s a guide to making a good-looking cover right in MSWord.
BookBrush, Canva, and Snappa all provide excellent tutorials, allow you to create ads & social media images, and each one comes in FREE and paid versions.
In addition to making it easy for non-designers to create covers, all of these sites also allow you to design:
- Banners
- Social media graphics (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest)
- Facebook covers and Twitter headers
- YouTube thumbnails and YouTube channel art
- Blog graphics
- Display ads of all sizes
- Images with custom dimensions
Here’s a review of BookBrush by Mishael Austin Witty.
David Gaughran lists a dozen FREE graphic design tools ranging from Coolers.co, a color scheme generator, to RemoveBG, an on-line background remover.
Sue Coletta posted a guide to making FREE book marketing images.
For a detailed comparison of Canva vs BookBrush, go to David Chesson’s review.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
A veteran (survivor?) of many cover meetings and plenty of follow-up one-on-one sessions standing over a drawing board hashing out pesky details and revisions with art directors, I’m not a designer. But, along the way, I have learned quite a bit about what the pros think about what works—and what doesn’t—when the subject is book covers.
First—and most important—is to put your creativity aside. Now is not the time to Think Different. Instead, you want to do what the other kids do.
Your goal when designing a cover should be to fit in rather than stand out. The reader wants to know at a glance what kind of book you’ve written.
- Police Procedural or Paranormal Romance?
- Historical Fiction or Steampunk?
- YA or Victorian Erotica?
- Gothic Suspense or Action & Adventure?
Once you’ve decided on genre, the elements—image, colors, fonts—you choose must work together to appeal to the reader you are looking for. The “wrong” image, color or font will confuse your reader, undermine your message, and lose your sale.
Where to start
- Check the covers of bestsellers in your genre. Embrace your inner copycat, and do what the others do. Every genre will adhere to current trends. Your cover should, too.
- Pay attention to color. Bright and lively? We’re probably talking Chick Lit or Cozy Mystery. Dark and ominous? We’re in thriller or mystery territory.
- The covers of your comp titles are another excellent source of ideas/inspiration.
- Make sure your cover appeals to the readers you are looking for. So, obviously, romance covers must appeal to women. Sci fi needs space ships, remote galaxies or aliens. Fantasy requires dragons, and horror, scary images.
At Written Word Media, Kelsey Worsham drills down into the details of what makes a good, genre-appropriate cover and gives examples of on-trend covers for genres ranging from Mystery/Thriller to Sci-Fi and Young Adult.
Canva offers a check list for designing a cover along with 42 cover ideas for inspiration.
How (and where) to find images
Sites like Pixabay and Unsplash offer FREE searchable images that might be just what you’re looking for. A search for Public Domain images will turn up more FREE possibilities to use on your cover.
Deposit Photos, with a library of 188 million images, and ShutterStock, which offers 10 FREE downloads with a free trial, greatly expand your choices. Many of their images are budget friendly. Register with them and they will notify you of sales.
On-line sites like PhotoCropper make it easy for you to cut, crop or otherwise manipulate images.
Sue Coletta recommends BeFunky, a powerful, FREE photo editing app.
This tutorial shows how to use MSWord to cut and crop images.
But, like soup in need of salt or stew missing garlic, your cover still needs that something special. Maybe you want to create a FREE 3D Book cover?
Or a spot of glow?
If you’re writing humor, how about a cartoon?
No problem. These on-line cover creators, design apps, and image libraries offer all sorts of nifty tricks and special effects that will make your cover pop.
What’s all this about fonts?
- Serif?
- Or Sans Serif?
- Bold?
- Or ital?
- Bold And ital?
- Angelina or Zamrud?
- Avatar or Zapf Chancery?
What!? I really have to know all this stuff about fonts? Yes.
Your choice of font is a Very Big Deal.
Fonts convey information and emotion. Choosing the right one will help your reader recognize immediately whether (or not) your book is what s/he is looking for. Use a font that misleads your reader and a misled reader will wave bye-bye and go on to search for another book.
Choose a font appropriate to your genre, and your prospective reader will know that you’ve written just what s/he is looking for.
Book designer and author, Derek Murphy, explains why fonts are so important, and how to pick one that’s just right for your book. From Fantasy to Romance, from Westerns to Chick Lit, here’s Derek’s cheat sheet…uh… helpful pdf guide—with examples!—pointing out which fonts work best for which genres.
A list of over 60 FREE fonts—Serif, San Serif and Script—by Roshan Perera at Design Shack will come in handy when budget is an issue. (And when isn’t it?)
Back at the drawing board.
Basically, KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Don’t get fancy. Or try to do too much. Don’t overload your early attempts with too many gimmicks and special effects. Stick to the basics: readable fonts, colors appropriate to your genre, and images similar to those used on other covers in your genre.
After a bit of trial-and-error (and most likely a bit of fun as you begin to see the possibilities), you’ve finally got your first cover.
Ooooh, exciting! It’s not bad. Pretty good. Maybe even terrific. But before you make your final decision, view your cover in the postage-stamp size sites like Kindle et al display on their book pages. Ask yourself—
- Is the title clearly legible?
- Does the overall impression conveyed via color, font and image immediately identify genre?
- If you’re well-known and have a large following, is your name large and legible?
- If you have a blurb from a noted author or a great review, have you included a few words of praise on the cover to entice readers?
Now you’ve arrived at the All Systems Go stage. You can release your book with its nifty new cover to the waiting world.
Why creating a cover is like writing a book.
Writing a book takes patience, finding and fixing mistakes, a willingness to rethink, revise and edit.
So does creating a cover.
These days, if you can write a book, you can make its cover—and a damn good one, too!
***
by Ruth Harris (@RuthHarrisBooks) November 29, 2020
What about you, scriveners? Have you tried the new DIY cover apps? Are you planning to try one out? Did you try to design a cover in the old days? Have you had any disasters with DIY covers? Or do you prefer to pay a professional for your covers?
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Ha! “Writing a book takes patience, finding and fixing mistakes, a willingness to rethink, revise and edit.
So does creating a cover.” No truer words were spoke (or in this case, typed). Thanks, Ruth.
Thank *you* CS. 🙂
If you’re good at it, PhotoShop would be a great program for designing book covers.
You’re not kidding about the importance of fonts. I’ve seen some that were just horrible.
Alex—Yes. PhotoShop is generally what pros use, but has a learning curve that takes time.
Fonts matter. A lot!
Ruth, this is a great tutorial for authors looking to DIY a cover. I would underscore the point about legibility. Today’s reader is apt to find a book by scrolling through tiny thumbnails. A cover has to look good and be easily read as a thumbnail, which is why we are increasingly seeing text-only covers from many publishers. Font size and style is going to be increasingly important as this trend continues.
Carmen—Thanks! Totally agree with your point about the trend to type covers. Solves the dilemma posed by thumbnail-sized displays at ebook vendors. 🙂
Hhas a writer, I can see the appeal of script only covers, but as a reader they do nothing at all,for me. It’s not very likely I’d buyba book with a script only cover.
Perfect timing, Ruth! I currently have three author clients who are scrabbling about looking for a handhold, waders on, about designing their book covers. Blue in the face so far in advising them, but what you’ve shared here is fabulous and underscores all the must-do’s in clear, straightforward terms.
Thanks so much for this!
Maria—Thanks! Sounds like they need to talked down off the ledge. I hope the post helps them find perspective about their covers. And maybe take off their waders.
They can come on in. The water’s fine. Or something like that. 😉
Thank you, Ruth.
I haven’t, yet, tried to design a cover, but I do use BookBrush to create visual advertising for an upcoming book. Somehow I think people respond better to visual than just words.
I choose an appropriate image and add a snippet and even a launch date, if known. It can be effective and great fun to play around with.
Brenda—Thanks for pointing out that creating visuals is fun. I had the same response.
Sounds like BookBrush is working very well for you. As they say, A picture is worth a thousand words. 🙂
Thanks for the shout-outs, Ruth! Wow, you packed this post with so many excellent sources. Bookmarking this puppy for future use.
Here’s a tip I learned a little too late. Don’t include massive amounts of blood on the cover of a mystery/thriller. Readers automatically assume it’s a horror novel. Ah, well, live and learn. 🙂
Sue—Thanks for the kind words and thanks for sharing your discovery that lots of blood equals horror. NOT mystery-thriller.
Truly, that’s how we learn. Our mistakes are our teachers. That’s how we make progress. 🙂
I’m glad to see this post acknowledging that DIY covers can be done if appropriate guidelines are adhered to. The conventional wisdom out there is for indies to hire a professional designer (followed by links to people who offer the service). I’ve just designed the cover for my first self-published book, and I’m very happy with it. What I immediately discovered was that if the imagery is at all complex, the title and author pretty much disappear when the cover is viewed in thumbnail size.
Liz—Agree that we’re being pressured into hiring pricey designers when, thanks to drag-and-drop design apps, we can make an acceptable cover ourselves. Thanks for sharing your tip about complex imagery. We’ll all learn from each other!
Happy to hear your first cover turned out well & that you’re happy with it. Your words will encourage others. 🙂
I used Bookbrush and one of my own photographs. It worked great (I first tried Canva and just couldn’t get the hang of it.)
Fabulous, solid gold advice on a subject so many aspiring authors just cringe from or even worse, try to ignore. The old saying about how many words a picture is worth- the cover is the first thousand words of your story, the part where the reader decides whether to buy or not.
I love these resources too, very valuable resource! One thing I’m not sure if anyone else has added (the Giants game was a nail-biter, so sue me), the cover can also include what you might call branding elements: certain images, placement or font choices that carry over across all your titles and help clue the tribe into the fact that you’ve come out with another masterpiece.
Will—Thanks for the flattering words. Appreciated! 🙂
Thanks, too, for your excellent point about including branding elements. Consistent images/fonts carry an important message that gets more powerful with repetition.
Would never sue you. (Not as long as Big Blue gets the job done!)
Thanks Ruth. I know I am woeful when it comes to anything related to visual design, which is why I don’t even like my own book cover much (and which cost more than it should – see https://tamsinthewriter.com/winning-book-cover-design/).
I will be reading each and every one of the articles you link to, to see if I can create something I think is better from a marketing perspective.
Tamstanford—Thanks for commenting and for sharing your frustrating experience. As you said in your post, you learned. As we all do: by trial and (painful) error.
I suspect that what you learned will be helpful as you click through the articles.
When you play around with the drag-and-drop apps, you will have fun and gain confidence! Good luck!
Thanks, Ruth. Creating covers is a learning experience, all right. In my case, I learned it was better to leave my cover design to a pro!
But I do recommend authors give it at try b/c it can be fun (and also frustrating). Even if you don’t use your own designs, you have a better appreciation of the many variables designers deal with. Then you can speak more intelligently when explaining the effect you’re looking for.
A shout out–if you enjoy Ruth’s great humor on this blog, you’ll doubly enjoy her entertaining new mystery, Park Avenue Blondes.
Debbie—Wow! Thanks so much for the lovely words about Park Avenue Blondes! So glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
As you say, we also need to know what we can’t do: ie learn our limitations. We all have them. But you make an excellent point about how trying to design our own covers (it’s fun even if you flop!) will help you communicate more effectively with a pro if you decide to go in that direction.
Some other tips:
PhotoShop Elements is another program you can use. It’s probably half right now. Even at full price, it’s budget friendly. Create a template with your name on it so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Divide your cover into thirds in both directions. Your image and text should line up with the one third points, since it just looks more balanced. I was on a Facebook covers page and every single one of them had a character centered on the page.
Part of the image should have space so you can put your name/title in. That also means stay away from anything too busy.
Sample the colors on the image to find the color for you name and title (another reason for staying away from busy or really dark covers).
If the image doesn’t work, get another one. I’ve sometimes gotten one and then found out I couldn’t make the text readable. With one, I looked at it a few weeks ago and my first reaction: “What was I thinking?”
Your name should look like what you find in the bookstore: Large. For some reason, writers think, “I’m not a best seller. No one knows who I am.” — and then they make their name really tiny. But what they’re also doing is making the book not look like it came from a publishing house. (And I know this one is controversial. I’ve had writers argue with me over it).
Linda—Great tips! Thanks so much!
I totally agree about making the author’s name large. It’s impressive and looks professional. That’s why publishers do it!
Informative piece, Ruth. I hear a lot of praise for Canva, and I’ve used it a bit for imagery. I find sizing a problem on Canva, but I probably don’t know what I’m doing. Don’t overlook good old Paint, though. Paint is so easy to crop and resize images, especially screenshots, and then save them however you like. If you’re on a real tight budget, you can work on Word by inserting images and then screenshoting them to Paint and go from there.
I’ve tried this route in my cheap old days, but it only got so far. In my experience, paying an outside cover designer who knows their stuff is worth as much as paying for proper edits. Something that hit me between the horns about how important good covers are was this year when I began doing ads on AZ and BookBub as well as EReader News Today and places like that. These sites use your book cover for their ad so it has to be eye-catchy and genre-specific to generate downloads. Keep well and best to Anne!
Garry—Thanks for mentioning Paint. I’m on a Mac so didn’t know about it. On Mac, you can resize in Preview.
The right pro designer can definitely make a difference especially if you’re looking for a complex cover. For a good, basic genre cover, tho, the drag-and-drop apps make trying the DIY route well worth the time and effort.
Thank you for this post. I’d like to make a note, however, about the use of free image sources. I use them too occasionally, and I’ve increasingly noticed that they don’t always have a permit to distribute the images (people upload someone else’s photos). So one should be very careful with those sites. And with public domain images there might be photos of people who haven’t signed up to have their faces on book covers, so one should be careful with those too. Other thing I’ve noticed is that the file quality isn’t always good enough with free images. They might do for ads and banners, but not for print. Stockphotos can be expensive (although there are bargains too), but in general they should be safer to use.
Susanna—Thank you for the important caveat about using free image sources. Right now, many of the stock photo sites are having year end/holiday sales so they’re well worth checking out.
Thanks so much Ruth for these great tips and links. Saving so I can check out all the links. And of course, grabbed a copy of your book! 🙂
dgkaye—Thanks for the kind words. Hope the tips & links help.
Thanks, too, for the purchase. I hope you enjoy PARK AVENUE BLONDES! ????
I look forward to getting to it. Thanks again. 🙂
Great article, Anne. I’ve started to make my own covers, fairly simply. There aren’t many genre rules in poetry!
Frank—Thanks for the kind words. Smart of you to stay simple whether in poetry or some other genre.
Good luck with your covers!
Frank–This post was written by my wonderful blog partner Ruth Harris. She’s a lot more tech savvy than I am. 🙂
dgkaye—Thanks for the kind words. Hope the tips & links help.
Thanks, too, for the purchase. I hope you enjoy PARK AVENUE BLONDES! 🙂