How to create an eBook cover

Covers

A book’s cover (and title) go a long way to ‘selling’ your book. There is a really interesting article on the topic on Indie Author News, and if you’re planning on using internal pictures, take a look at this Amazon help page.

I’d recommend a smart but simple cover, nothing too dull (so it looks as if you haven’t tried) but nothing too flash so the text isn’t clear or it’s too complicated. The thing to remember is that online it will appear about the size of two large postage stamps (four standard size) so you have to be able to read it and get the gist of what it’s about (where the title comes in). I’d recommend looking at existing covers before you starting putting yours together and below are some great covers…

• http://bookcoverarchive.com
• http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/the-50-coolest-book-covers
• http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/50-beautiful-book
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2012/sep/29/new-book-cover-designs-doedemee
  

Below are some of mine as examples…

Free eShorts

   

$0.99 / £0.77 short story collections and $0.99 / £0.77 novel

   

$0.99 workbooks

If you don’t have photographs already then I recommend http://morguefile.com. You can search by topic / subject, although the more random subject you put in (e.g. man) the more results you’ll get. There are over 9 million photographs and illustrations to choose from, thousands of which are free (and you don’t have to attribute them to anyone), just remember to select ‘free photos’, although even their paid ones they say are cheap (I’ve never had to pay for one, I’ve always found what I’ve needed in their free section… so far).

For creating your cover, I’d then recommend Picasa (http://picasa.google.co.uk) where, without too much difficulty (it’s fun playing with the options). From this…

you can do this…

      

The four eShort book covers shown above were especially easy. In Picasa’s collage option I added a photograph (slanted it in ‘Feeding the Father’) then added the text (there are loads of different fonts to choose from). ‘April’s Fool’ was the trickiest of those four; I designed it by taking a photograph of a calendar, fading the background, copying one of the months to the front then using the text option on Picasa to add the text. Some trial and error but fun getting there.

Cover size

You’ve all held a book, you know that they are portrait but what size do they need to be? Amazon’s only requirement is that the longest side (the height) is at least 2,500 pixels whereas Smashwords want a minimum of 1,400 pixels width. Proportion: there’s a great article listing Smashwords requirements here, which explains that “most good-looking covers have heights that are around 1.3 to 1.65 times greater than the width”. This means that if you have 1,400 pixels wide, Smashwords’ minimum, you should have a height of between 1,820 to 2,310 pixels. Both those latter two figures are too small for Amazon so unless you’re only going with Smashwords, make sure that they fit both, e.g. minimum of 2,000 pixels wide by 2,600 to 3,300 pixels high.

Just in case that’s as clear as proverbial mud, here’s a table to help you…

WIDTH @1.3x	HEIGHT @1.3x	WIDTH @1.65x	HEIGHT @1.65x
500 pixels	650 pixels	500 pixels	825 pixels
750 pixels	975 pixels	750 pixels	1237 pixels
1000 pixels	1300 pixels	1000 pixels	1650 pixels
1250 pixels	3750 pixels	1250 pixels	2062 pixels
1500 pixels	1950 pixels	1500 pixels	2475 pixels
1750 pixels	2275 pixels	1750 pixels	2887 pixels
2000 pixels	2600 pixels	2000 pixels	3300 pixels
2250 pixels	2925 pixels	2250 pixels	3712 pixels
2500 pixels	3250 pixels	2500 pixels	4125 pixels
2750 pixels	3575 pixels	2750 pixels	4537 pixels
3000 pixels	3900 pixels	3000 pixels	4950 pixels

You won’t need a back cover for an eBook so that’s one less job to do.

Have fun and do let me know how you get on (or if you get stuck).