Creating Your Book Cover

Build a front cover that really pops for your self publishing project

Get a decent graphics program and a high quality background you like. One or two pieces of high quality royalty free clipart and some text and you’re done, as with the Captain Marvel cover above. This one’s ready to be an ebook. Of course, a paper book needs a bit more precision.

My Hunger Games Guide Cover : Full Cover with Spine for a 5.5 x 8.5 Book

The back cover is a Word document saved as a very high quality picture using a file converter though I likely should’ve used Printscreen). This image was then pasted into a full size jpg picture (8.5" height by 5.5" back width plus 5.5" front width plus spine plus [1.25" bleed times four sides]) using a graphics program (KDP has a calculator tool for spine width and a template for covers). The template was pasted over this temporarily to make sure there was enough margin around the edges. The text on the front and spine were created and manipulated for size and position in the graphics program as were the bird and arrow pictures. A search online for free fonts produced the Embossed-style lettering and the Hunger Games font. Note the large empty square on the back…