Self-made Book Covers

I wanted to share some tips—the first one a very important tip—about making your own book covers.

In a private FB group I’m in, which focuses on optimizing your book on Amazon, there is a lot of focus on having the right book cover. I’ll share at the bottom some of the amazing NM episodes on this topic. But meanwhile, here are some tips.

1. Balance.
   This is the biggest “tell” of a self-made book. Here are two webpages that can give you an idea of how to “balance” the elements of your cover.
   
   https://keithdraws.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/composition-using-the-golden-ratio-on-your-cover/
   
   https://www.coverdesignstudio.com/book-covers-layout/
   
   These two resources teach the best way to give your cover class, and to fit into the overall market.

2. Typesetting (lettering)
   Not doing lettering right, or not balancing its location (see above), or using uncoordinating font styles can make your book look sloppy and homemade.
   
   https://www.creativefabrica.com/pt/the-artistry/fonts-and-digital-designs/learn-how-to-pair-fonts-with-25-perfect-font-combinations
   
   —>(if you can’t access this link, see the printout of the page in the comments).

   The other point about lettering is the TYPE of font, the % of the page it uses. This is COMPLETELY determined by genre. Skim the best-sellers in your subgenre, and especially skim the best-selling “NEW RELEASES” to find if your subgenre uses SERIF or SAN SERIF or DECORATIVE, and where it (and the author name) are placed on the cover. There will be a pattern.
   
   Ultimately, shadows and other text-related features should be done by someone with experience. Might be worth hiring someone on Fiverr.

3. Color and Use of Light (and character position)
   A browser extension to help you determine how to study your subgenre is called Kindletrends Also Bought downloader. Using this in INCOGNITO mode will enable you to see the Also Boughts. This will download an image that puts all the covers together next to each other so you can look for patterns about what the dominant colors are and where light is coming from (also how many/size of characters)
   
   https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/also-boughts-downloader-b/kpfalnccljfmbogklbbgbhcldihafcpp
   
   The following is a resource that helps you determine which exact colors will look good together. Don’t guess. This must be tied to the trends, but will help you in choosing accent colors.
   
   https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
   

4. Getcovers.com (made-to-order) and GoOnWrite.com (premade) have low-cost nice looking covers. Sometimes it might save your book to just have a professional do it.

5. AuthorMedia resources:
   
   (edit: for some reason the links aren’t working. Go to https://www.thomasumstattd.com/pick-my-brain/ and search for book covers to find many episodes.
   

   

   
   
   I hope these resources are helpful.