~Authors: Do Your own Book Covers and Save $$$~

Covers and titles make a big difference. I will admit I have yet to figure it all out, however I have learned a few things that I can pass along. I imagine that paying a professional cover artist to do a cover could very well solve the problem. When you visit Createaspace, one of the options is to have a professional artist do it for you. Simply check the box , make the payment and you'll have something in a day or so. If you belong to a authors' community like Wattpad, You can tell your fellow authors you want help on a cover and you will probably have something in a jiffy.

In that you are a creative person, it is very likely you will want to try it yourself. Heck--you figure the worse thing that could happen is that it looks terrible and then you can put out the word you need help.

Let's get Started

For the most part, having a good photo to work with is half the battle. I use the simple Microsoft paint program and I do know that a better program would probably do a better job in adding the lettering. Createspace, the Amazon print division has a helpful free program and that can solve a lot of problems. You can sign up and then use the free cover making tool. They provide a wide range of photos and cover templates. You can calculate that you may experiment to your heart’s content as long as you never finish the project. One nice feature is that you can copy your half done cover at Createspace and then move it to your art program on your computer.

For the missile cover I found they had a photo of the space shuttle and then I was able to use most of it and replaced the shuttle with the three missiles in my Microsoft paint. For the capitol building I had an old photo to play around with and ended up with a template at Createspace that seemed to work fairly well.

Then I purchased a newer computer with an upgraded paint program. The result is the cover at the top of the page. It was great when the "Fill" function actually worked and I was able to blacken the sky. One of the effects was "bulge" and I used that to distort the lettering and I like it. The thought is that the missiles are causing the lettering to break up.

Goodreads

Once you have two covers you can go to Goodreads and set your covers in a single advertising program and they will send you daily graphs of the response to your covers and short description. The ads can be purchased for as little as ten cents and thousands of readers will see your cover and ad copy. You can update your ads at any time. If something isn’t working you can update it and then you do need to wait a day while their staff approves the changes.

I’m only a few days into Goodreads, and am surprised how little this is costing me. The readers are supposed to add your book to their reading shelf and then one day they will purchase it and write a review.

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Update on Goodreads.

There seems to be a lot of numbers generated and a lot of the readers appear to be interested, however it doesn't appear that many sales are made from the efforts there. Plan for your book to have a shelf-life much like a newspaper or magazine. After a few months or so, the readers will move on to the new offerings and show less interest in your book. That is when it is time to start another book. Plan to place the older books in your catalogue as the new books will draw the most attention and then readers will take a look at your catalogue and make purchases.

If anyone has suggestions, please use the comment to correspond. Please indicate which cover has the most appeal too.

Thank you.

See my Book covers at Amazon