Ok, so you’ve got a book. Now you need a cover and there are soooo many people out there willing to design you one.
I mean, Just go onto Fiverr and search for ebook covers. There’s over four thousand designers on there willing to help.
But here’s the rub.
As talented as those designers are, your bank account is side-eyeing you, arms crossed and shaking its head.
As important as a cover is you just can’t justify the expense just yet. Once your book starts earning you some money, then, yeah, sure, it can pay for its own cover redesign.
But until then?
What’s a broke writer to do?
Well, you can do what I did – say ‘Sod it’ then design your own.
With that decision made all you’ve got to do is figure out where to make it. And there are quite a few options to choose from.
You could use Photoshop if you have access to it, Picmonkey (go for the app not the webpage if you want it free), Amazon has their own cover creator you can use, you could probably use Microsoft Word or even Paint if you really wanted.
But me? I went with Canva.
To be fair I now use Canva for most things – I made my logo with it, Instagram posts, blog images, Pinterest pins, book covers, promo posts, etc etc.
I use it so much that I’ve splurged and signed up for a Pro account that costs me about £10 a month, which means I will be using various Pro-only images and text to make it worth it. But you don’t have to go Pro, the free version is still good, and you can still make a good cover with it.
Promise.
For this post I created a whole new account with only free access to show you it’s possible.
So how are we doing this?
First things first, create an account with Canva if you don’t already have one. It’s easily done, just stick in your name, email, and a password.
It’ll take you to the following screen. I went with ‘Small Business’, but choose which ever works for you.
After this you can skip the rest – you don’t need to sign up for the Pro free trial, or add any extra information, or even consent to further contact if you don’t want to.
What you want is this screen;
Type in ‘ebook’ and click on that drop down.
That should open up a blank cover for you, the dimensions for which are fine and based on Wattpad guidelines I believe. This size image can be used on Amazon if that is where you’re intending on publishing. Just open up the Cover Creator when you get to that stage, upload this as an image, then remove any additional text Amazon has stuck on top.
If you want to just straight upload an image to Amazon though, this size isn’t big enough. According to Amazon the ‘ideal’ dimensions for a book cover are 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. This template is certainly not that. So, if that’s what you want you’ll have to head back to the home page as resizing a template is a Pro ‘perk’. But on the home page you can set custom dimensions. In the top right hand corner is a button that says ‘Create a design’. Press that then ‘custom dimensions’, make sure the drop down is for ‘px’ then add the dimension sizes and hit ‘create’. Simple. Now you’ll have the same screen as below, just with a bigger template.
Now the real fun begins.
Scroll through the templates if you want, or type something in the search bar like ‘romance’ or ‘mystery’. You don’t have to choose any of these, but they can help spark the imagination if you’re a little stuck.
Of course, it also helps to have Amazon or Goodreads or something open in a tab too, so you can scroll through other books in your genre. Generally speaking, genre covers are very similar – Mystery favours colours on the darker end of the scale, Romance has an insane amount of shirtless muscly men (and that’s in both the M/F and M/M branches).
Find that common thread, then play with something that works for your book.
Got an idea?
Good. That blank page is waiting for you.
Below is the search page on photos. As you can see ‘shirtless man’ brings up many options, however most of these have that little crown in the bottom right corner. That means they’re Pro images. You use one of those, you’ll be paying 99p (or whatever the foreign currency equivalent is) to obtain the commercial rights, which, when compared to paying a designer, is nothing. But if you want this to actually be free, then avoid the little crown.
(Now then, I will admit that Canva’s search function drives me barmy sometimes, it’s a little limited, but keep at it and you’ll eventually find something you like.)
Do you see those three little dots on the picture that actually says ‘Pro’ in its bottom corner? If you click that it’ll open up a little box filled with other tags this picture is found under. You can use these tags to find other images, just click one.
Mess around with search terms, look through tags, eventually you’ll find something.
I found the image I ended up going with under ‘gay couple’.
When you do find something you like the look of, then play with it.
Change the size of the image, play with Adjust, Filter, and Effects.
I added a little bit of Vignette, found under Adjust.
There is one thing Pro has in Effects that the free account doesn’t, and that is the Background Remover. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used this particular function since the majority of photos do not have transparent backgrounds.
I mean, it’s not the end of the world, and you can make some good covers with just the photos. But sometimes you might want a different background (Canva has plenty to choose from there too). Without removing a photo’s background, you can’t change it.
Once you’ve got your image how you want it, it’s time for text.
You can do this in a multitude of ways…ok, so maybe there’s, like, three ways.
If you go into ‘Text’ you can choose to just add text, then change the font, size, colour etc yourself. Or you can choose one of the premade font combinations. As you can see that’s the route I went down. The third way is to go into ‘Styles’ and choose something from there.
Shift things about, change colours if it doesn’t work. Just, yet again, avoid the little crowns when changing font.
This cover needed a little extra something, not much, just something.
So I went into the Elements tab, and tried out different lines and borders until I found something I liked.
Once you’re happy hit that little download button in the top right hand corner, choose your file type, then download.
Simple.
This is the finished product.
Is it perfect?
No, of course not. But I’m happy with it and other than taking up a bit of time from my day, it was completely free.
(…y’know the more I look at this damn cover the more I want to know their story. But I have far too many WIPs to even think about another story right now.)
So there you have it. Making an ebook cover in Canva.
Once you get over the slightly annoying search function, you can use it to make some pretty decent covers. I’ve actually started making them for fun, especially when I’m having problems with my stories.
It’s like an active alternative to Pinterest for me. Instead of passively scrolling for inspiration, I’m actively making a cover for the story or a sequel. It’s even helped me figure out a character problem I was having.
The idea of making my own cover originally terrified me, now I do it for fun which means below you’ll find five other covers I made for this post, just because I could.
And the best part?
They didn’t cost me a single penny.
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If you like anything I’ve written, and feel like chucking some spare change my way like I’m some sort of street artist with an open guitar case before me, I’d be eternally grateful.
If that’s not your thing, then no worries, just ignore the red button.
Thnx!
Thanks!