OnyxTowers: How To Make A Book Cover - Part 3 - Custom and Premade Book Covers

WELCOME TO PART THREE OF MY BOOK COVER SERIES!!! *WHEEeeeEEEee
(quit shouting, alter ego!)

(For my previous How To Make A Book Cover articles, click on Part 1 and Part 2 and enrich your mind.)

Updated: ~~July 15, 2018.~~ ~~June 25, 2020.~~ November 12, 2021

As you very well know, I have stressed over & over again that you shouldn't attempt to create your own book cover from scratch. Why? Because that sort of thing falls under the domain of graphic design, which is a completely separate career that takes 2-4 years to master, and I am 100% sure many of you do not have graphic design listed as your day job.

It is incredibly complex, involving things like typography and CAD software, and thus I always discourage doing this yourself. Leave it to professionals.

Excellent! Now how do I leave it to professionals?
Glad you asked!

How To Make A Book Cover With PreMade And Custom Book Covers

So by now, you must have some idea that commissioning an illustrator or graphic designer isn't the only two options.
Because Surprise! You can purchase premade book covers!

What Are Premade Book Covers?

Premade book covers are already assembled, finished with photos, fonts, imagery, blank space to insert barcode, etc. that you can upload it to your Amazon or Smashwords account (or wherever you plan to sell it) along with your formatted book.

How does buying a book cover go?

You purchase the cover.
There is usually an order form on your computer screen, and a place to type out the title of your book cover, publisher info, your author name, etc.
Then you wait until they apply the title and all this information you entered.
Then it gets sent to your email inbox, as an attachment file that you download to your computer.
Done.

It truely cannot get easier than that.

Lemme show you what an example looks like:

Example of a premade book cover

So that little shitty cover took me about 15min to make. On Microsoft Paint, no less. Yeah, not so good, I'm afraid. But you get the idea.

The title and name are blanks because once you make your purchase, the people who sell them go back in and type in that information.

Well, can't I type in the title and author name myself?
No, because you need special software to do so.

Like Microsoft Paint?
Nope. God, no!

Conserve your precious time and sanity, and just purchase a premade cover. Get professional with your writing pursuits, don't just treat it like some hobby in which your efforts are half-assed.

How Do I Pay For A Premade Book Cover?

So most of these sellers take Paypal or other similar online payment processors, not just credit cards. Put some cash in your Paypal and use it to make your purchase.

What for? Why bother with Paypal?
Paypal allows you to download your buyer/seller transactions into spreadsheets, so you can print it out and present it to your accountant if you wish to detail this as a business related expenditure, for the tax reimbursement. Also, they have a generous protection policy, so no worries.

So, for the record, here's Kindle's guidelines on book cover art:

⦁ Cover creator (use this as a placeholder before uploading a professional cover, but not as a book cover itself) https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201113520

⦁ What they allow on a book cover & what they don't https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200672390

So I should just google any ol' premade book cover website?

No. They are all not that good.
Surprise!

I made a list below of some sites whose work I thought was stellar. Those seem to operate as full fledged businesses. But there are some that operate as independent sellers, and while some are more than decent, some are also terrible looking.

Don't go in blindly into purchasing book covers

I won't rat them out, 'cuz everyone needs to pay the rent. Just take a look before you buy. Now this exact reason is why I will not put independent sellers on the list. This all goes back to that discussion I wrote about where people think that they can manipulate the Character window in Photoshop and suddenly they fancy themselves graphic designers. And just because you know how to apply Shadow to fonts does not make you a graphic designer. Um, no.

What you can do is have a basic eye for detail. Know what to look for.

Remember, it's the designer's job to make your book cover sellable, not just pretty.

Before You Purchase

Go in with some idea of what to spot as a no-no.
Just as if you were buying a house. You know that cracked joists, mold and moisture problems, and outdated appliances are a no-no even if you're not a licensed contractor.
So!
Look out for these obvious signs:

Title and Author should be kept far away from each other

blurry images or lettering of any sort

Title and Author should be in different fonts

Tag line and/or quotes should also be in a separate font

Every different font should be in different color

Misalignment of fonts

Misalignment of imagery, or lack of centering properly

All image elements look like obvious cut & paste collage effects, because the 'designer' has no understanding of lights and shadows, and blending

Fonts that seem to camouflage or disappear into the book cover. It's better to have the lettering stand out like crazy, than to have it vanish and force viewers to squint while they scroll up & down the Kindle store looking at your competition

If a seller has obviously crappy covers on their site, you will know.
Because things are gonna look wonky, and you can't quite put your finger on it. Your instinct says something is off. Go with that instinct. Because if you don't, your readers/buyers will.
And that's a lost sale buddy!

Side note: Remember with any custom jobs, you will pay a generous premium, as those book covers cannot be resold if the author backs out. It also takes longer man-hours to construct. Time and labor!

Side side note: Remember with any Fantasy or Science Fiction covers, you pay more. This is because those elements aren't things that exist that can be photographed, such as, an existing space war ship. Or a supernova explosion in outer space. So they must be created from scratch via illustration or CGI.

What looks like hot garbage

Just a reminder of what terrible, confusing and outright crappy book covers looks like:

Facebook Groups Of Book Cover Sellers

⦁ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1253110551382543/

I don't really need to put up more, as you find one group, there are so many more listed on the right side panel inside Facebook.

Premade Book Cover Sellers List

Premade Book Cover Sellers

Here's another lengthy list, by Creativepenn: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/bookcoverdesign/

You may need to supply this information if the book cover maker doesn't already know.
Book Sizing
⦁    http://www.adazing.com/createspace-spine-calculator/
⦁    http://www.ebookcoversize.com/

If you really want to do this yourself, proceed with caution.

Software to make book covers (if you really wanna drag & drop the elements all over the screen)
⦁    https://www.myecovermaker.com/
⦁    http://www.diybookcovers.com/covercreator/
⦁    https://www.coverdesignstudio.com/product-category/cover-designs/
⦁    https://www.designonclick.com/preise/

You will need a box shot to apply to Twitter ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, etc. This is either already included in your book cover sticker price, or they will sell it to you for an additional fee. Or you can try your luck below.

Box Shot
⦁    http://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/
⦁    https://boxshot.com/3d-pack/3d-book/
⦁    http://boxshotmaker.com/
⦁    http://www.supershareware.com/3d-ecover-free/
⦁    https://online.boxshot.com/shapes/3d-hard-cover-book

These are separate businesses that work specifically doing custom jobs. Some of the ones I listed above may do custom work too, check their FAQ's section.

Custom book covers
⦁    https://www.bookflydesign.com/
⦁    https://www.rockingbookcovers.com/pricing-services/
⦁    https://bookcoverforyou.com/#pricing
⦁    https://www.coverdesignstudio.com/product-category/premium-designs/
⦁    https://bookcoverscre8tive.com/custom-orders/

In Conclusion

And that about wraps up Part 3 of my How To Make Book Covers series of articles.
Here is click on Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed it from before.

Hope that all of the wisdom I have imparted upon you has you plenty educated by now. If any of you have more questions I haven't covered, send me a direct message on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OnyxTowers

And here is an interesting article about a book cover designer: https://lithub.com/secrets-of-the-book-designer-my-job-isnt-to-make-things-pretty/