Gang, I should probably create a how-to eBook including this stuff and offer it as a freebie to entice you to sign up for my email list (which doesn’t exist yet). Maybe I will some day, but I just want to share this with you now, no strings attached. Fair enough?
So far I’ve followed my self-imposed strategy of publishing my debut novel, “Dangerous Dreams – Dream Runners Book One”, as an eBook only, waiting for at least a quarter to respond to readers’ comments and to edit out any residual screw-ups. It’s much easier to respond to these, um, idiosyncrasies with an eBook than with a paperback. Thankfully, generous comments and few screw-ups tell me it’s time. I’m now flirting with creating the paperback.
What are the implications, you might ask? Well, even if you aren’t asking, I’m telling you anyway. In short, a lot! My hope is that some of this may be of use to you authors, and maybe just interesting to you, my treasured readers…
For example, questions abound:
- Do I self-publish through CreateSpace, an Amazon company affiliated with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), that now seems to be one-in-the-same, or through some other self-publishing service, or through a more traditional publisher (and agent and editor, and…)?
- Do I get my own ISBN, that unique “serial number” for each book that endures for the life of the volume (not required for an eBook)?
- And if so, should I use a free ISBN from Amazon that only allows me to publish from within their ecosystem?
- Or do I pay a hundred bucks or more to Bowker (the ISBN monopoly, at least here in the US) for each book I publish, giving me more degrees of publishing freedom?
- Or…?
But all that is beyond the scope of this article. Today, I’m focusing on the more enjoyable task of creating a book cover for print.
So I thought I’d first dabble using CreateSpace’s guidelines.
They offer a useful downloadable template (PDF or png, required file formats) for creating my paperback book cover, including implications I didn’t have to consider with an eBook, such as:
- Book format (height and width): I chose a standard 5×8″ format as a starting point,
- Number of pages that will drive the spline width (the part of the book visible when it’s sandwiched between my favorite books by Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, JD Robb, John Sandford, Judy Howard, and Dean Koontz),
- Full-bleed background images (those that extend past the edges of print boundaries) and their precise dimensions so as to print perfectly,
- Awareness of boundaries for text so all text will be legible in the final print version of the cover,
- Ensuring text does not intrude into the area where the ISBN number and barcode will be printed on the back cover or where the cover will be trimmed,
- Output must be saved per the POD vendor’s print guidelines. In this case, as a high-quality (print quality) PDF or PNG format (I’m using PDF),
- And, of course, the actual text itself that does not violate any of these constraints while remaining sharp and legible (including my choice of fonts; FYI, my choice is called “Chalkduster” in PhotoShop).
Fortunately, CreateSpace, as one example of a print-on-demand (POD) vendor, provides a template that makes what might otherwise be a complex and confusing task relatively straightforward.
I’m also blessed to be an experienced PhotoShop user, so I just created image and text layers to fit within the template within PS using the open, duplicate layer, and transform functions. Easy-peasy-mac-n-cheesy.
If you’re not a PS user, I’d suggest you hire someone who is. I’ve found other do-it-yourself cover design programs that work well for eBooks (e.g., Canva) don’t have precise formatting and dimensioning options required for print preparation. At least I don’t think so.
The key here is not only the look and feel of your cover design but fitting the precise dimensions of your print vendor as well so that it all looks good and is legible.
Configuring a custom template before downloading the result for further use is easy within CreateSpace and even comes with instructions for filling it out:
My blank template, configured for the number of pages (determines the spline width), interior color configuration and the paper color looks like this:
Just to be clear, I’m no expert. I’m just a self-publishing author stumbling his way through this process, one step at a time, wishing to share nuggets of experience that might prove of use to others.
After filling in the template, overlaying it with image and text layers in PhotoShop, below is my feeble attempt at a front and back cover with an appropriate spline:
Edit (3/8/2020): Well, in testing the cover above with my beta readers, guess what? You won’t be surprised…
This cover sucks!
More than a few of you told me this cover looked amateurish, but more importantly, the title turned off more than a few readers. Same with the back cover text. SO, I retitled the book, went through a few iterations of covers, rewrote the back cover copy (text) MANY times and asked fellow authors for feedback. This was great!
But I found I was spending more time on this cover than I cared. So I broke down and hired the pro cover designer used by my friend, Nick Russell (New York Times best selling author and top Amazon bookseller). Turns out Elizabeth Mackey is the same designer my mentor Judy Howard uses! This entire process was time and money well-spent by listening to my author friends and most importantly, to my readers. Thank you, all.
The moral: Test your cover. You have about one second to capture your prospective reader’s attention. You damn well better have a good cover, or no sale. Test your book description. Assuming your one-second shopper turns your book over, or clicks on your cover, you damn well better feature a dynamite description, or bye-bye reader!
Check it out. Nice, huh? This book became the first in my Dream Runners series:
And since I originally posted this article, I’ve written and am about to publish the second in this (Dream Runners) series. Notice the branding consistency with the first book above (theme, look and feel, design)? Available in 2020:
Cool, huh? Note that I had to save the image out of PS as a JPG in order to include it in this post (PNG or PDF not supported in this blog), but the print vendor does indeed require a PDF. Aligning all the text, and rotating some for the spine took a bit of time, but this should meet all the print guidelines for CreateSpace.
Edit: 3/7/2020 (continued): CreateSpace is no more. Now it’s just Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and here are KDP’s current print guidelines (and they’re finicky).
I imagine other POD vendors may differ, but this is one example.
If you have any thoughts on this design, I’d very much appreciate your comments.
With pen in hand,
GK (but you can call me Gene)
P.S. I’d be honored if you’d consider following me on Twitter or FaceBook. Thanks.
[…] I flirted with starting down this path well over a year ago, and shared what I learned at that time in an article about one print-on-demand (POD) vendor, KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing, an Amazon company. FYI, if you were familiar with CreateSpace, it has been absorbed into KDP. I posted some good info in an article you can find here. […]
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