Book Cover Design Tips | Self-Publishing Review

The Best Premade Cover Designers for Indie Authors

In this day and age, there’s no reason to have a bad book cover. Though there are more tools available to make your own book cover, that doesn’t mean you should, as designing a book cover takes as much finesse as any creative art, so if you all you can draw are stick figures, you have no business getting into graphic design.

This is especially true because the cost of book cover design has come down a lot in recent years, while the quality has gone up. This is true as well for premade book covers. You supply the […]

SPR2019-05-23T11:55:07+02:00May 23rd, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips|

Self-Publishing: What Not to Do

There is some degree of impatience that goes along with self-publishing. Why wait around for a publisher when you can have a book now? That’s one of the bigger fallacies of the industry, because if you choose to do everything yourself it can (and should) be more work. Writers are still driven to cut corners because it can be so difficult to handle every side of the business. So long as you understand there’s difficulty every step of the way, you will hopefully give each step in the process the attention it deserves.

Here’s a primer on the common […]

SPR2020-02-21T03:47:02+02:00April 18th, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips, Book Editing Tips, Book Formatting Tips, Book Promotion Articles, Writing Tips|

How To Get The Best Paperback Cover You Can With CreateSpace

Many authors have bemoaned their CreateSpace paperback quality, i.e. print cover results in forums. But there are certain tricks of the trade that are right in front of your nose that would have given you a perfect result. Here’s a quick rundown of some easy to grasp techniques when choosing your print options with CreateSpace.

Do your interior first

Remember that you need your page count before you do your cover, because you need to know how wide your spine is! When you download your template, you will need to input the exact number of pages. Remember the interior is […]

Cate Baum2020-02-21T05:43:40+02:00June 22nd, 2017|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Book Cover Design Tips|

Self-Publishing Starter Kit

We get a lot of questions here from writers just beginning to self-publish who have little to no idea about the process. They’re all asking about the most basic nuts and bolts: how do I self-publish? We’ve gathered together the best services currently running (and have been running for a while) to publish a book quickly and professionally.

There’s still a fair bit of DIY involved with the services listed below, but you’ll have a more professional book and keep a larger share of the royalties.

So here’s a basic starter pack for the novice self-publisher who wants more of […]

Henry Baum2024-07-25T16:45:56+02:00January 28th, 2015|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips, Book Formatting Tips, Book Marketing Advice and Tips, Book Promotion Articles|

Five Factors For A Great Book Cover

Why is it some book covers pop while others are astoundingly wrong? As a self-publishing author it’s essential to get it right. Here are five factors to consider when choosing a design.

1. Does your cover represent the contents of your book?

Sometimes a cover cannot be judged by the book. Take a look at this edition of Huckleberry Finn for example – does an urn-carrying nude really tell us the story of two boys on an adventure? Obviously not. You may know the image you choose is pertinent because something happens in the book, but does your title reflect […]

Cate Baum2020-02-21T03:21:07+02:00July 2nd, 2014|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips|

Designing a Book Cover with 99Designs

Though 99Designs has had mixed reviews of their logo design service, the book cover wing has a good track record. JC Leland was the e-Book Cover Design Award Winner for June 2012 in Fiction at the Book Designer blog using a 99Designs cover.

The author captions: ““I ran a design contest at 99designs.com to develop the cover art for my book. Highly recommend this process for authors!”

Here’s how it works: you submit info about your book to the pool of designers and pay money up front ($299 and up). This acts as the cash prize, and then designers […]

Henry Baum2014-01-20T14:56:09+02:00January 15th, 2014|Categories: Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips|

What Sells a Book?

Book covers

I’ve often seen independent authors posting a series of cover images online and asking people to choose their favourite; or they might ask a handful of friends what cover they’d buy. Choosing a book cover with either method doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have been telling my family I’m going to paint my bedroom for the last 15 years, but there it is, the same ugly shade of pink it was in the late 1990s.

My point is that people don’t always do what they’ll say they’ll do. A better question to ask friends or people […]

Cathi Stevenson2020-02-21T05:52:23+02:00June 16th, 2013|Categories: Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips, Book Marketing Advice and Tips|

Creating a DIY Book Cover with GIMP

Doing your own artwork

Although I signed with a great publisher for my e-book, I opted out of print, deciding to self-publish a paperback edition of my novel. Doing my interior and cover design would allow me artistic control, for better or worse, of the product.

Having more time than cash, I wanted to see how much I could accomplish without spending any money. That meant doing everything myself.

What’s the goal?

One of the first things that struck me, while browsing book covers online, was how many were unreadable when displayed as icons. Not surprising, really, […]

Lianne Simon2020-02-21T03:23:01+02:00March 9th, 2012|Categories: Lead Story, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips|