How to Create a Book Cover for Your Ebook



After I made my decision to publish my novel as an ebook, I needed to focus on the practicalities:

  • editing my manuscript
  • creating a cover for the ebook
  • publishing it to various ebook platforms
I will cover each of these points over the next few posts, but to begin, let's start with the front of the book and work our way in. 

In this post I'm going to walk you through the steps I took to create my book cover. After I decided to self-publish, I went back to Karen McQuestion's blog and read her experiences with creating a book cover for her ebooks. She mentioned that she used fotoflexer.com. While there are several websites with free templates for book cover design, many required Photoshop software, which I don't have. I enjoyed working with fotoflexer.com because it was very easy to use and of course, it was free!



I started with this cover, which I created from a picture of pages from my 'red journal' and text I incorporated for the title and author's name. It's okay, but a little naked.


I went back to fotoflexer.com and played around with the special effects. I changed the font of the title to reflect the writing style of the journal, since journals play an important part in the novel. And then I added a border to the outside of the photo to give it an anchor.


Still not happy, but working with the same photo, I played around with the color of the photo by adding a sepia element to the coloring and then a black background for the title to highlight it. This is actually pretty good.


Then, I decided I wanted to try something completely different. So after reading an article about designing book covers on Galleycat.com, I found a great resource for photos at the Library of Congress image collection, which is where I found the lovely picture above. I uploaded it to fotoflexer.com again and added the title, name, and frame. Still, I wasn't completely satisfied.



After several tries, I eventually came up with my final book cover. By playing around with the special effects on fotoflexer.com I was able to change the color of the original, crop the image, and change the fonts so that it became a cover that reflected not only a pivotal scene in the book, but also the mood.

Granted, I'm not a professional, not even close! But I'm pleased with the final product.

In my next post, I'll talk about the editing process...

Comments

Your cover is absolutely gorgeous!I was tickled to read that you heard of fotoflexer.com through my blog. And how clever of you to use the public domain image. I wasn't aware of that option when I started out, or I would have definitely gone that route.

Off to buy your book. :-)
Thank you Karen, actually your blog was a great source of inspiration through this entire process!
Mariellen said…
That is totally amazing, Suzanne. Really a wonderful way to help ordinary mortals like myself to reach towards a very commerical and professional looking result.

My head is spinning!!
larramiefg said…
Having been privy to your original two choices in b&w, I was enchanted with the balloons cover. Then the finished result turned into blue and it became "dreamy."

You may not be a professional yet....but you could be!
aaronnssd said…
Your cover is really beautiful. Creative Paramita is a custom eBook cover designer. Our online shop is one stop destination for all your eBook cover needs. Anyone can visit our website to know the further details.

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